The NYC Energy & Water Performance Map helps us understand the energy and water efficiency of more than 26,000 buildings across New York's five boroughs.
NYC's Greener Greater Buildings Plan included one of the first benchmarking ordinances passed in the US: Local Law 84 of 2009. Local Law 84 has since become a model for cities grappling with the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in buildings. This law requires private buildings over 50,000 ft2 and public sector buildings over 10,000 ft2 to report their energy and water consumption each year for public disclosure. The NYC Energy & Water Performance Map will help users analyze annual energy and water consumption data for calendar years 2013 and 2014 for all buildings covered by Local Law 84.
With better analytical tools, the City aims to help property owners, buyers, and tenants to factor energy, water, and greenhouse gas emissions into their real estate decision making processes.
Learn more about NYC's Local Law 84 energy and water benchmarking program here.
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Research and Publications
Professor Kontokosta leads an inter-displinary team of researchers at NYU CUSP and the Tandon School of Engineering to study the dynamics of urban energy use and the potential for data-driven approaches to accelerate the adoption of energy efficiency in the built environment.
For those interested in learning more about building energy efficiency and urban sustainability, below are a list of selected publications that form part of a larger research agenda that investigates the intersection of benchmarking data and a wide range of datasets across land use, real estate, and socio-economic conditions across cities.
Housing Affordability and Energy Cost Burdens: Are Poor Households Disproportionately Affected by Energy Inefficiency in Multi-Family Buildings?
Constantine E. Kontokosta
The Building Energy Visualization Tool – An Interactive Data Analysis Platform
Bloomberg Data for Good Exchange 2015
Constantine E. Kontokosta and Christopher Tull
Data Sources
Energy, water, and greenhouse gas data are from the NYC Local Law 84 disclosure data. This is provided by the Mayor's office of Sustainability for the following years:
2014 (Reported in 2015)
2013 (Reported in 2014, available for download here)
Full data definitions are available for Local Law 84 and PLUTO. The most relevant are defined below.
Weather Normalized Source EUI: The Weather Normalized Source Energy Use Intensity (EUI) is the source EUI in kBtus per gross square foot (kBtu/ft2 ) of the property, normalized for weather. Weather normalization facilitates comparison between different parts of the country and corrects for year-to-year differences in weather. Weather Normalized Source EUI values are the result of self-reported entries.
Water Use Intensity (WUI): The annual consumption of water in gallons per gross square foot (gal/ft2 ) of the property.
GHG Intensity: The total direct and indirect greenhouse gases emitted due to energy used by the property per gross square foot of the property, reported in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per square foot (kgCO2e/ft2). The carbon coefficient is based on New York City's EPA Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID) sub-region.
ENERGY STAR Score: A 1-to-100 percentile ranking for specified building types, as calculated by Portfolio Manager, with 100 being the best score and 50 the median. It compares the energy performance of a building against the national Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) database, and independent industry surveys for that building type. This rating is normalized for weather and building attributes in order to obtain a measure of efficiency.
Property Type: The self-reported property type, as selected from the property type options available in Portfolio Manager. This is not necessarily consistent with the property type designation in Department of Finance records.
Gross Floor Area: Gross square footage of the property, per Department of Finance records.
Number of Buildings: The total number of buildings located on the tax lot per Department of Finance records.
Number of Floors: In the primary building on the tax lot, the number of full and partial stories starting from the ground floor.
Reporting Year:
Property typeNo. of properties
Orange line: currently selected building
Explore New York's Energy and Water Consumption
This visualization shows energy and water use, greenhouse gas emissions and building sizes of New York City buildings that are required to report their energy and water consumption due to Local Law 84.
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Weather Normalized Energy Use Intensity (kBTU/ft²)
