Worried that the apartment you like could be an energy hog? Help is on the way, as U.S. states and cities begin this year to require that commercial buildings measure and disclose their energy use.

The new rules could shame large building owners into upgrades that will save energy and create jobs. They’re akin to nutritional labels on food, Energy Star ratings on appliances and miles-per-gallon stickers on vehicles. They won’t specify utility costs but will show a building’s relative efficiency, measured in energy use per square foot for apartments.

Today is the deadline for 16,000 large buildings in New York City— representing half of its interior space — to report how much energy they used in the past year or face $500 quarterly fines. The city will post the data on a public website next year.

Similar requirements — the first of which took effect in January in Washington state — begin in Seattle, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., in October and in Austin next June and throughout California as early as next year. Half a dozen other states are considering such rules.

The Department of Energy is preparing to test a voluntary program to measure the energy use of commercial buildings next year, as it did in a pilot program finished in June with U.S. homes.