You can create all the green jobs you want or reduce your paper consumption to outdo your neighboring business, but nobody will ever know unless you go public about it. The City wants to create a new way to keep businesses on their toes when it comes to cutting back on wasteful energy use: audits.

Mayor Gavin Newsom along with Supervisor Bevan Dufty introduced legislation Tuesday that would require nonresidential buildings to audit how much energy they use and make those results public. It mirrors an existing state law that requires businesses to disclose that information at the point of sale. But San Francisco, being a competitive green leader, took it a step further.