BERDO Compliance: Deadlines, Fines, and What Boston Building Owners Have to Do
A property developer called us recently, close to panicked. He had heard about BERDO, understood that fines were part of it, and wanted to know what he was supposed to be doing.
He’s not the only one. If one owner is worried enough to pick up the phone, plenty of others are sitting on the same question and haven’t asked it yet.
So here’s the whole thing, start to finish, without the consultant-speak. What BERDO is, whether it covers your building, what your building’s actual number is, what happens if you go over it, and where solar fits in.
What is BERDO?
BERDO stands for the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance. It’s Chapter VII, Section 7-2.2 of the Boston city code, and it requires large existing buildings to report their annual energy and water use, verify that data through a third party, and keep their greenhouse gas emissions under an annual limit that drops every five years until it hits zero in 2050.
Put more simply: the City tells you how much carbon your building is allowed to put out each year, that number shrinks over time, and you have to prove you stayed under it.
The original ordinance passed in 2013 as a reporting rule. Nothing more than paperwork. The City Council rewrote it in September 2021, and that version, the one people call BERDO 2.0, is what added the actual emissions limits and the money attached to missing them.
Boston isn’t doing this for symbolic reasons. According to the City, about 5% of Boston’s buildings produce nearly 40% of the city’s carbon emissions. That is a small number of properties emitting more than every car, truck, and train in the city combined in a given year.
Does BERDO apply to my building?
Three categories, and you only need to fit one:
- Residential buildings with 15 or more units
- Non-residential buildings that are 20,000 square feet or larger, excluding parking
- Any tax parcel with multiple buildings that add up to at least 20,000 square feet or 15 units
One detail that trips people up on mixed-use properties: your building counts as residential if 50% or more of its gross floor area, excluding parking, is residential. That matters, because residential and commercial buildings get different emissions limits.
If you want to confirm, the City maintains a public BERDO Covered Buildings List with every property and its BERDO ID.
What am I actually required to do?
Report every year. You submit last year’s energy and water use through ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, then complete the BERDO Reporting Form with the data tied to emissions compliance. The standing deadline is May 15. The City extended the 2026 deadline to August 15, which has now passed, so if you missed it the clock is already running.
Verify your data. You hire a qualified third-party energy professional to check your numbers. This is required in your first reporting year, in your first emissions compliance year (2026 or 2031), and every five years after that.
Stay under your emissions limit. This is the part with real money behind it, and it starts in different years depending on how big you are.
When do the emissions limits start for my building?
Starting with the 2025 calendar year (reported in 2026): non-residential buildings 35,000 square feet and up, and residential buildings with 35 or more units.
Starting with the 2030 calendar year (reported in 2031): non-residential buildings between 20,000 and 34,999 square feet, and residential buildings with 15 to 34 units.
If you’re in the second group, you still have to report every year right now. You just aren’t being measured against an emissions cap yet. Five years feels like a long runway. It isn’t, once you factor in how long boiler replacements and roof work actually take to plan and fund.
What is my building’s emissions limit?
Your limit depends on what the building is used for, and it is measured in kilograms of CO2 equivalent per square foot per year. Think of it like a speed limit sign that gets swapped out for a lower number every five years, and the road ends at zero in 2050.
Here’s what a few of the common use types look like, straight from Table 1 of the ordinance:
| Building use | 2025-2029 | 2030-2034 | 2035-2039 | 2040-2044 | 2045-2049 | 2050+ |
| Office | 5.3 | 3.2 | 2.4 | 1.6 | 0.8 | 0 |
| Multifamily housing | 4.1 | 2.4 | 1.8 | 1.1 | 0.6 | 0 |
| Retail | 7.1 | 3.4 | 2.4 | 1.5 | 0.7 | 0 |
| Assembly | 7.8 | 4.6 | 3.3 | 2.1 | 1.1 | 0 |
| Lodging | 5.8 | 3.7 | 2.7 | 1.8 | 0.9 | 0 |
| Healthcare | 15.4 | 10.0 | 7.4 | 4.9 | 2.4 | 0 |
| Technology/Science | 19.2 | 11.1 | 7.8 | 5.1 | 2.5 | 0 |
There are 13 use types in the full table. If your building has more than one primary use, and each one takes up at least 10% of the square footage, you can apply for a blended standard that mixes the limits together.
Notice the jump between the first two columns. An office building’s allowance drops about 40% in 2030. Whatever plan you build should be aimed at that column, not the one you’re sitting in now.
What happens if I go over?
There are two very different things people lump together here, and the difference is worth understanding.
Alternative Compliance Payments are not fines. An ACP is a legitimate compliance mechanism written into the ordinance. If your building is over its limit, you can pay $234 for every metric ton of CO2e you went over, and you’re considered compliant. That money goes into the Equitable Emissions Investment Fund, which pays for decarbonization work in Boston’s environmental justice communities. The ordinance set that $234 figure at the start and the Review Board revisits it every five years.
Fines are what happens when you ignore the process. Miss your reporting deadline and each day counts as a separate violation, at $300 a day for the larger buildings and $150 a day for the smaller ones. Blow past your emissions standard without using any compliance mechanism, and it’s $1,000 a day for larger buildings, $300 a day for smaller ones. Report numbers that your third-party verifier contradicts, and that carries a $1,000 to $5,000 penalty.
You get a 30-day cure window after a notice of violation before any penalty is assessed. But unpaid fines can end up as an assessment on your tax bill or a lien on the building.
So the honest math for a lot of owners is this: ACPs are cheaper than fines, and doing nothing at all is the most expensive option on the board.
Where does solar fit into all of this?
BERDO gives you three ways to comply. Cut your energy use, obtain renewable energy, or make Alternative Compliance Payments. Solar lives in the middle one, and it has a real advantage over the other renewable options.
Here’s the rule that matters most: on-site solar located behind the meter is always eligible under BERDO, with no MA Class I REC retirement required. Rooftop solar on your own building, wired directly into your electrical system, counts. No brokers, no NEPOOL retirement paperwork, no annual purchase to remember.
That’s not true of every option. If you buy solar net-metering credits from an array somewhere else, the rules get more specific. Credits from a system inside Boston are fine without retiring RECs. Credits from a system in Eversource’s Eastern Massachusetts territory are fine without RECs only if the array started operating before 2024 and you started receiving credits before 2024. After that, you need to retire the associated MA Class I RECs, or request a solar exemption from the Review Board.
How much of my emissions can solar cover?
Under BERDO, renewable energy applies to the emissions from your building’s electricity use. So the more of your building that runs on electricity, the more ground solar covers for you.
That’s useful to know early, because it shapes the order you do things in. If your heat and hot water still run on natural gas or oil, that share of your footprint gets handled through equipment upgrades rather than through renewables. Most buildings end up walking the same path: electrify heating and hot water as the existing equipment reaches end of life, tighten up the envelope, and put solar behind the new electric load so the emissions do not simply move from the gas meter to the electric meter.
Solar is usually the easiest piece to start with, and it’s the one that keeps paying you back while you plan the rest.
One more thing working in your favor. The grid is getting cleaner underneath you. Massachusetts requires electricity suppliers to add more renewable energy every year under the Renewable Portfolio Standard, and BERDO builds that into its emissions math. Your electricity emissions drop a little each year even if you do nothing at all.
Why not just buy RECs every year?
You can. Plenty of owners do, and the City runs a MA Class I REC Connector Program to make it easier.
But compare what you own at the end. RECs are an operating expense that comes back every single year, and the price is whatever the market says it is that year. A solar array is a capital asset that sits on your building, produces power you’d otherwise buy from Eversource or National Grid, and keeps offsetting your BERDO emissions for 25 years or more. One is rent. The other is equity.
There’s also a timing element. The federal commercial investment tax credit currently requires projects to be placed in service by December 31, 2027, and Massachusetts is issuing SMART 3.0 statements of qualification following the DPU’s tariff approvals in 2026. Commercial solar projects take time to design, interconnect, and build. The buildings that get the best economics on their BERDO compliance are the ones starting the conversation now rather than in 2029.
How can Boston Solar help?
We’ve been installing solar in Massachusetts since 2011, with more than 7,500 systems in the ground. Our commercial team works with property management companies, apartment portfolios, and small businesses across Boston and New Hampshire.
For a BERDO building, we can look at your reported energy data, size a system against your actual electric load, tell you honestly how much of your emissions gap solar can close, and handle interconnection with Eversource or National Grid from application through permission to operate. If solar only gets you part of the way, we’ll say so, and we’ll tell you what the number looks like.
Compliance isn’t going away and the limits only get tighter. The buildings that plan for the 2030 column now are the ones that won’t be scrambling.
Get a commercial solar assessment for your Boston building.
Sources: City of Boston Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (CBC Chapter VII, Section 7-2.2, as amended September 22, 2021); boston.gov/berdo BERDO 101, Emissions Compliance, and Renewable Energy quick guides; City of Boston MA Class I REC Connector Program page. Verified August 21, 2026.
