Montgomery County BEPS: Who Is Actually Covered

By Max Fisher · Published 2026-10-22 · Updated 2026-10-24

Short answer. Montgomery County’s Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS) apply to most public and privately owned buildings of 25,000 gross square feet and larger. If you own a single-family house, a townhouse or a small building under that size, BEPS does not apply to you. Property managers of covered office, retail and multifamily buildings are the audience here, along with the heat pump installers and mechanical contractors they hire to meet the standard.

Everything on this page comes from the county Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which runs the program, and the county code it enforces. Where DEP’s pages and older secondary summaries disagree, we follow DEP.

The law and who runs it

BEPS sits in Chapter 18A, Article 6 of the Montgomery County Code, the Building Energy Use Benchmarking and Performance Standards law. The county adopted implementing regulations, transmitted to the County Council as Executive Regulation 17-23, which set how targets are calculated and how improvement plans work. DEP’s BEPS page and its Covered Buildings and Deadlines page are the operational sources of record.

Is my building covered?

DEP’s rule of thumb: most public and privately owned buildings of 25,000 gross square feet and larger must benchmark their energy use every year and meet a performance standard. For this law, a “building” is either a single structure, or two or more structures that share an energy meter, a common heating or cooling system or interior common areas.

DEP keeps a public inventory of covered buildings, as a list and a map. It also says each owner must confirm their own square footage and metering to determine coverage. If you think your building belongs on the list and it is not there, DEP asks you to email [email protected].

Exemptions

An owner can apply for an exemption when:

Exemptions are requested from DEP. They are not automatic.

Groups and deadlines

Every covered building falls into a group by size and use. The group sets the baseline years and the two evaluation years. These are DEP’s published dates:

GroupBuildingsBaseline yearsInterim evaluation yearFinal evaluation year
CountyCounty-owned, 50,000+ sq ft2018 to 202220282033
Group 1Non-residential, 250,000+ sq ft2018 to 202220282033
Group 2Non-residential, 50,000 to 250,000 sq ft2018 to 202220282033
Group 3Non-residential, 25,000 to 50,000 sq ft2022 to 202420302035
Group 4Multifamily, 250,000+ sq ft2022 to 202420302035
Group 5Multifamily, 25,000 to 250,000 sq ft2023 to 202520312036

Each evaluation looks at the full calendar year, reported by June 1 of the following year. DEP’s example: Group 1’s interim evaluation covers 2028 energy use and is reported by June 1, 2029.

New buildings follow the same groups. They start benchmarking after their first full calendar year of occupancy, set their baseline from their first three years of reported data, and then share the interim and final years of their group. The clock does not reset because a building is new.

What a covered building has to do

Benchmark every year. Covered buildings report energy use to DEP by June 1 each year. DEP uses that data to compute the building’s normalized net site energy use intensity (NN EUI): weather-adjusted energy use per square foot, with parking, EV charging and on-site renewable energy credited out.

Meet a target or file a plan. DEP sets three points for each building:

From there, owners choose one of two paths:

Performance pathImprovement plan (BPIP) path
What it involvesCut energy use, or add on-site renewables, until the building hits its EUI targetGet an ASHRAE Level 2 audit, file a retrofit plan with measures and a timeline, then carry it out
What counts as compliantActual energy use at or below target in the evaluation yearCarrying out the filed plan on schedule, regardless of the building’s EUI
OngoingAnnual benchmarkingAnnual benchmarking plus a June 1 report that scheduled measures were done

A plan must be prepared by a qualified auditor: a professional engineer, or someone holding a credential DEP lists, such as ASHRAE BEAP or AEE CEA or CEM. The audit must be less than four years old when the plan is filed. Plans are due 90 days before the June 1 report that follows an evaluation year. For specially designated buildings, such as affordable housing, common ownership communities and rent-stabilized multifamily, “cost-effective” measures are those that pay back within 10 years.

DEP’s practical warning is worth repeating: compliance is judged on the evaluation year’s actual energy use. If your deadline year is 2028, upgrades should be finished in 2027 so the savings show up in time.

Penalties

DEP’s enforcement page is explicit. Any violation of the law, including failing to benchmark, missing an interim or final standard, or failing to file a plan, is a civil Class A violation:

Citations can also carry a request for an Order of Abatement, and a court can impose further sanctions if a building still does not comply. DEP notes that state legislation, HB 49, now lets the county impose penalties up to the amounts MDE may impose, but says the County Council has not yet written that change into the county code.

County BEPS versus state BEPS

Maryland also runs a statewide building energy performance standard. DEP states that buildings in Montgomery County are exempt from the state program and follow only the county requirements, because HB 49 exempts counties that run their own programs.

For owners elsewhere in Maryland, the Maryland Department of the Environment’s state BEPS page sets a different threshold: commercial and multifamily buildings of 35,000 square feet or larger must submit an annual benchmarking report and may need improvements to meet performance standards in the 2030s. MDE lists building types that can apply for an exemption, including agricultural, hospital, K-12 school, manufacturing, federally owned and individually designated historic buildings, and buildings smaller than 35,000 square feet. The state program sits within MDE’s broader clean buildings work under the 2022 Climate Solutions Now Act.

What this means for property managers

What this means for contractors

BEPS does not create a new HVAC license. Maryland’s licensing rules still decide who may do the work; see contractor licensing. What BEPS creates is a customer with a fixed deadline and a measured target. A property manager will judge a heat pump proposal by what it does to the building’s NN EUI by the evaluation year, and whether it fits a filed plan, not only by equipment specifications. Proposals that show the expected energy reduction and the schedule against the group’s deadline speak that language.

How to verify this yourself

If a DEP page changes after this page’s publication date, DEP wins. Tell us and we will correct it. To find mechanical and heat pump contractors near your building, start with Rockville, Silver Spring or Bethesda.

Sources

Related city pages