HONG EXAMINER – March 2026
Monthly Newsletter of Hong Consulting, LLC.
VertPro.com Mailers. Buildings have been receiving mailers from VertPro.com titled “Honolulu Compliance Reminder Regarding Benchmarking.” These notices are not from the City & County of Honolulu (C&C) and the C&C does not endorse the use of any third parties for compliance with the Better Buildings Benchmarking Ordinance. There is no requirement that buildings use a third-party service to comply with Ordinance 22-17. Official notices from C&C will include the City logo and use an official City program email address. If you have any questions or comments concerning these notices, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
Submission Link. The submission link for the benchmarking reports due June 30th, 2026 is now live. You can find it here: https://portfoliomanager.energystar.gov/pm/reports/dataRequest/accept/9f91c621-d46a-4d68-b4fb-71b602dc4faf. The C&C will eventually remove last year’s reporting link from their website and replace it with this one. They remove the reporting links for prior reporting periods because too many buildings accidentally file their benchmarking reports in the wrong year. The removal of links to past reporting periods does not mean your past due reports no longer need to be filed. You are still marked as non-compliant if you failed to submit a required benchmarking report. To submit a past due benchmarking report, you must contact the C&C for the reporting links for previous filings periods.
2025 Data in Excel. The City & County of Honolulu has made the benchmarking reporting data for the periods 1/1/22 – 12/31/22, 1/1/23 – 12/31/23, and 1/1/24 – 12/31/24 available in Excel. This allows for more thorough analysis of the data than in the Transparency Map. You can more easily compare your property against similar property types. The following are some highlights I pulled from the data for the period 1/1/24 – 12/31/24:
667 properties were in filing compliance for the period with 319 of them designated as multifamily housing.
The average water use intensity (gallons/square foot) for multifamily housing properties was 63.8 and the median was 58.5.
The average site energy use intensity (kBtu/square foot) for multifamily housing properties was 28.4 and the median was 26.
If you would like to review the data yourself, click on the following link and scroll down until you see the “View Data” button under the heading “Buildings Transparency Map”: https://www.resilientoahu.org/benchmarking.
