The New York Power Authority (NYPA) recently announced the completion of a report on the energy use of New York State government buildings. Benchmarking public buildings and analyzing the results provides important baseline data that will be used to measure the progress of Governor Cuomo’s BuildSmart NY initiative, which will prioritize projects at the largest and most inefficient buildings. Representatives from state agencies and authorities with significant building energy use have worked with the staff at the Governor’s office, NYPA, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) during the past several months to gather, review, and refine the baseline energy use data in the state buildings studied. This collaborative approach to gathering and reporting data, and linking the results to an initiative to reduce energy use in the most inefficient buildings, provides a model that may be replicable in other states. The report is available here.