An Interactive Energy Map of the City of New York

March, 2017

AEI has delivered an Energy Map explorer that shows energy and water usage in the City of New York for over 13,000 buildings and 1.8 billion square feet across a wide range of builting types from office buildings to multi-family housing. The explorer is available online at www.aeintelligence.com/city-of-new-york.

AEI developed this visualization as a follow-on to its work building the City of Boston Energy Map to demonstrate that size matters. With a twenty-fold increase in the number of buildings in scope we can get a much more relevant picture of the energy footprint in a large city that deemphasizes artifacts in the reporting (municipal pools in Boston skew their results because of the small sample size), at the same time it improves the year-over-year progress reporting which is instrumental to achieving the City's 2025 and 2050 GHG reduction goals. With a broader and more accurate baseline, the effects of the cogeneration effort at NYU in reducing GHG emissions stands out all the more when the peer group is large.

For the individual building owner in the multi-family housing sector, is my high EUI compared to the other 8,000 buildings a reporting issue or should I be considering a significant renovation to make my rentals more competitive? With the high penetration of district steam in Midtown Manhattan, should city planners focus on this vital energy asset for infrastructure improvements or further leverage it because of its relatively low cost in terms of GHG emissions? As a Microgrid solutions provider, do clustered MFH buildings with a single owner offer an opportunity to improve their energy profiles and reduce their reliance on grid resources?

Questions like these are an inevitable part of the discussions that lead to more enlightened energy policies that have duly considered the trade-offs, costs, and political challenges associated with achieving the goals that are so easy to set when they are 30 years away. In the meantime, reporting mechanisms such as LL84 in New York, BERDO in Boston, and the increasing trend toward disclosure reporting requirements in hundreds of other cities and towns in the U.S. make the data more reliable and at least suggest the possibility for a common reference point for a wide range of constiuencies to use when asking such questions.

Our goal with an AEI Energy Map is quite simple. It's to assimilate your data sources - from annual utility reporting to real-time building interval data - and present them in a way that lets you ask and answer the questions that are important to you. From the portfolio level down to the individual building performance level. Rinse and repeat each reporting period so that you have measurable trends and feedback for your goals and achievements.

How does this help portfolio managers save energy?

• It's a comprehensive energy exploration tool is vital for understanding portfolio-wide usage and costs that can drive discussions with utilties, aggregators, facility managers and city planners,
• They can learn how their buildings stack up against the DOE and Energy Star national averages, by commodity, season and facility type,
• Ranking facilities by EUI, per square foot, and costs helps target resources to the energy efficiency opportunities with the best ROI,
• An Energy Map is a consistent entry point into facility details such as billing records, building automation system (BAS) data and analytics, utility interval data and peak demand analytics,
• With daily and weekly updates, it's an O&M view at the facility level that can help facility managers react to weather, occupancy and variables at the HVAC level,
• And there's support for widget integration with town websites can help drive awareness and social behavior at a high level, with trouble ticket support at the individual facility level.

For more information or to put your portfolio on an Energy Map, contact AEI.

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