Shining Light on Nothing? The Null Effect of Mandatory Energy Benchmarking on NYC Property Values

Abstract

Governments worldwide mandate energy disclosure for buildings, expecting transparency to reshape real estate markets. I exploit a sharp regulatory threshold in New York City's Local Law 84—which requires buildings above 25,000 square feet to publicly report energy and water consumption—to estimate the causal effect of mandatory benchmarking on property values. A first-stage compliance jump of 42.3 percentage points confirms the threshold binds. Yet the main regression discontinuity estimate on log assessed value is $-0.040$ (robust SE $= 0.059$, $p = 0.591$): a precise, well-powered zero. This null persists across bandwidths, polynomial orders, kernels, donut specifications, borough subsamples, and building cohorts. The results imply that commercial real estate markets already internalize energy performance information, and that mandatory benchmarking—whatever its other merits—does not alter how the market prices buildings.