How to Fill Out and Submit an Energy Audit Form

To fill out an energy audit form, you collect your building’s physical details, pull 12 to 24 months of utility bills, inventory your mechanical equipment, enter each item into the matching field on the form your auditor or program provides, and submit it through the portal or email address they specify before the on-site visit. The form captures your building’s characteristics, consumption history, and equipment so the auditor can establish a baseline and find where you’re losing money. Done well, it means the auditor spends their site time analyzing your building instead of reading nameplates.

Find Out Which Form You Need

There is no single universal energy audit data collection form. What you fill out depends on who is requiring or performing the audit:

Utility company programs. Most major utilities offer free or subsidized audits and provide their own intake forms through online account portals. Search your utility’s site for “home energy audit” or “commercial energy assessment.”
State energy offices. Agencies like the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) run programs with standardized templates.
The DOE Audit Template. For commercial buildings subject to municipal benchmarking laws, the U.S. Department of Energy hosts an online Audit Template at buildingenergyscore.energy.gov. New York City requires this template for Local Law 87 reporting.¹
Private auditing firms. Independent auditors typically email their own questionnaire after you schedule an assessment.

For commercial buildings, ASHRAE Standard 211 defines procedures and minimum reporting requirements at three progressively detailed levels, and many forms are structured around its framework.² If your auditor refers to a “Level 1” or “Level 2” audit, each successive level requires more granular data from you.

Gather Your Building and Occupancy Data

Start with the building itself. At a minimum you need gross square footage, number of floors, year built, and dates of any major renovations.³ Age tells the auditor how much insulation has likely degraded, which is why forms also ask for R-values or U-values for walls and roof assemblies. If you don’t know your insulation values, note the wall construction type and exterior material and let the auditor estimate.

Window and door details matter more than most people expect. Forms typically ask for total fenestration area, glazing and frame type, and the condition of seals around exterior doors.³ Double-pane windows with intact seals perform very differently from single-pane units with visible gaps, and auditors need that distinction to calculate heat loss accurately.

For commercial buildings, record average occupant count, standard hours of operation, and any occupancy schedules that vary by time of day or day of week.³ These figures drive ventilation and cooling load calculations. For residential forms, note the number of people living in the home and whether anyone is home during the day.

Some residential forms include a section for air infiltration data from a blower door test, which measures how much air leaks through the envelope using a calibrated fan and manometer.⁴ If you’ve had the test done, enter the results. If not, leave the fields blank. The auditor will perform the test during the on-site visit and fill them in.

Pull 12 to 24 Months of Utility Bills

Gather continuous monthly statements for every energy source serving the building: electricity, natural gas, and any delivered fuels like propane or heating oil. Consecutive months matter because seasonal patterns are invisible in spotty records. The form will ask you to enter monthly consumption (kilowatt-hours for electricity, therms or cubic feet for gas) and the corresponding costs.

For commercial buildings, watch for peak demand charges on your electric bills. These reflect your highest rate of electricity use during a billing cycle and often make up a disproportionate share of the total. If your bills break out demand (measured in kilowatts), enter it in the demand column. Auditors use that data to evaluate whether load-shifting could reduce costs.

Auditors read this history to spot anomalies. A sudden spike in gas consumption during a mild month can indicate a failing boiler. Steadily climbing electric bills with no operational changes can point to degrading equipment efficiency.

Share Utility Data Electronically If You Can

Many utilities now support Green Button Connect My Data, an industry standard that lets you authorize the direct transfer of your usage data to a third-party auditor or software platform.⁵ You control the authorization, set how long it lasts, and can revoke it at any time. The direct transfer eliminates manual entry errors and gives the auditor interval data that’s more granular than monthly bills. Check your utility’s online portal for a “Share My Data” or “Green Button” option.

Inventory Your Mechanical Equipment

The equipment inventory is the most time-consuming section, but skipping it forces the auditor to spend billable hours reading nameplates during the site visit instead of analyzing performance.

For heating and cooling equipment, record the manufacturer, model number, manufacturing date, fuel type, and efficiency rating. As of January 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy replaced the SEER metric with SEER2 for air conditioners and heat pumps, so newer nameplates will display SEER2. For furnaces and boilers, the relevant metric is AFUE (Annual Fuel Utilization Efficiency). If a nameplate is unreadable or missing, note the unit’s approximate age and fuel type. The auditor can look up specs from the model number.

Water heaters go in this section as well: storage capacity in gallons, fuel type, and any efficiency rating. For commercial buildings, include process heating equipment, commercial kitchen appliances, and refrigeration units.

Lighting and Plug Loads

Lighting inventory means counting fixtures and noting bulb type and wattage in each area. The distinction between LED, fluorescent, and older incandescent or halogen fixtures drives some of the easiest upgrade recommendations an auditor can make. For commercial spaces, note ballast types for fluorescent fixtures and whether any lighting controls (occupancy sensors, daylight dimming) are already installed.

Plug loads cover everything plugged into the electrical system. You don’t need to list every desk lamp, but do note large or unusual loads: server rooms, commercial freezers, manufacturing equipment, EV chargers. These often account for a larger share of total consumption than people expect.

Enter the Data Without These Common Mistakes

Once your data is gathered, the actual form completion is a mapping exercise. A few things trip people up:

Efficiency ratings. Enter exactly what appears on the nameplate. A SEER2 value of 15.2 is not equivalent to a SEER value of 15.2 because the testing methods differ. If the form asks for SEER and your unit shows SEER2, note which metric you’re reporting.
R-values versus U-values. Some forms ask for insulation in R-values (higher is better), others in U-values (lower is better). They’re inverses. If you only know one and the form asks for the other, divide 1 by the value you have.
Conditioned versus unconditioned space. Square footage fields on commercial forms often separate heated and cooled areas from unconditioned space like parking garages or storage. Don’t lump them together. It skews the energy-use-per-square-foot calculations auditors rely on.
Incomplete data. If you can’t find a nameplate or don’t have a bill for a particular month, mark the field as unknown rather than guessing. A blank field prompts a follow-up question. A wrong number produces a wrong recommendation.

For NYC Local Law 87 compliance, the process uses the DOE’s online Audit Template. Create an account at buildingenergyscore.energy.gov, select “Audit Template,” then choose “NYC Energy Efficiency Report” as your report type and enter your building data directly in the platform.¹ A Quick Start Guide on the DOE site walks you through the interface.

Submit the Form and Know What Comes Next

How you submit depends on the program. Utility-sponsored audits typically accept the form through the utility’s online portal or by email to the assigned program manager. Municipal compliance programs require electronic submission through their designated platform. For NYC LL87, completed reports go to the Department of Buildings at LL87@buildings.nyc.gov by the applicable deadline. Buildings subject to LL87 must submit an Energy Efficiency Report once every ten years, with the year determined by the last digit of the tax block number. The 2026 deadline has been set at March 31, 2026 for buildings whose cycle falls in that year. The Department of Buildings is authorized to issue violations for late or incomplete filings, with escalating penalties for continued noncompliance.¹

After submission, expect the auditor to review your data and follow up with questions about anything unclear. For residential audits, the timeline from data submission to on-site visit can be as short as one to two weeks, with the final report delivered within a few weeks after the walkthrough.⁶ Commercial audits on larger buildings take longer, particularly Level 2 and Level 3 assessments that require sub-metering or engineering analysis.

During the on-site visit, the auditor verifies what you reported by checking nameplates, testing equipment operation, and inspecting the envelope. Residential audits often include a blower door test and thermal imaging to find leaks invisible to the naked eye.⁷

If You’re Claiming the Federal Tax Credit

One boundary worth knowing before you file: the Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit (Section 25C) that allowed homeowners to claim up to $150 for a qualified home energy audit cannot be claimed for property placed in service after December 31, 2025, per the IRS instructions for Form 5695.⁸ If you had a qualifying audit performed in 2025 and haven’t filed yet, you can still claim the $150 credit on your 2025 return using Form 5695, Line 26.⁹

For the credit to hold up, the audit must have been performed by an auditor certified under one of the DOE’s recognized Qualified Certification Programs at the time of the audit, and the written report must include the auditor’s name, taxpayer identification number, and the name of the certification program. Without these details, the credit will be disallowed.⁸ Keep the written audit report and your receipt; the IRS does not require you to attach them to the return but may request them if your return is examined. Hold the records for at least three years after filing, which is the standard IRS examination window.

1
NYC Department of Buildings. Energy Audits and Retro Commissioning – Buildings
2
ASHRAE. Standards 180 and 211
3
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). FlexTech Report and ASHRAE Energy Audit Requirement Comparison
4
Energy Saver. Blower Door Tests
5
Green Button Alliance. Green Button Connect My Data
6
HUD Exchange. Energy Audit Timeline
7
Energy Saver. Professional Home Energy Assessments
8
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5695 (2025)
9
Internal Revenue Service. Energy Efficient Home Improvement Credit