Large buildings in Minnesota must report their energy use
In 2024, the Minnesota legislature passed a statute requiring the reporting of energy use and benchmarking for defined buildings greater than 50,000 square feet. Buildings 100,000 square feet or greater are required to submit building energy use data by June 1, 2025, and every June 1 after. Buildings 50,000 square feet to 99,999 square feet are required to submit their building energy use June 1, 2026, and every June 1 after.
The Large Building Energy Benchmarking program is a state-wide program aimed at increasing energy efficiency, decreasing operating costs and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions in the building sector. The State of Minnesota requires owners of certain types of large buildings to report their natural gas and electricity use through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager.
For more program information go to the Minnesota Commerce Department’s Large Energy Benchmarking page.
How do I get started?
If you own a building covered by the new reporting requirement, complete our information request form so we can provide you with your building’s natural gas use data. You will need to provide the following information:
- The address of the building.
- Your name as manager or owner of the building, along with an email address to which we can send your building’s energy information.
- The meter number for each of the natural gas meters at your building.
- If your building has four or fewer tenants with Minnesota Energy Resources accounts, you also must submit a Benchmarking Customer Information Release form signed by each tenant/Minnesota Energy Resources account holder.
What are the next steps?
After you complete the information request form, we will aggregate the monthly natural gas use for your building using the accurate meter numbers which you have submitted. After we process this information, we will send you an email with:
- The number of accounts aggregated by Minnesota Energy Resources.
- The aggregated monthly usage for the previous calendar year.
- The identification of the building.
Notes:
- No individual customer usage information or account numbers will be reported.
- Gathering this information is a manual process and will take time to complete. We encourage you to request your information as soon as possible.
- You must provide complete and correct meter numbers for your building. Failure to provide such information will result in incomplete aggregate energy use information for your building.
