Mining energy-efficiency opportunities in the NYC building

If unlocked markets information to thrive, New York City before recently a gold mine for the energy efficiency industry.

The city became the first in the United States which leads public as good (or bad) every private building within its borders if it is about energy and water consumption. A city website shows 530 million square meters includes details of 2,065 large commercial real estate.

Builders were required by law to participate in the program part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg 'PlaNYC' target, carbon dioxide to reduce emissions 30 percent by 2030.

"I'm sure data is not always exciting, but the takeaway here is that a town even big and sophisticated knows almost nothing about his privately owned like New York buildings and like the privately owned buildings use energy,", said Andrew Burr, Director of building performance energy policy at the Institute for market transformation, a community service with New York and other cities at the green-building plans.

The assessment painted a sometimes surprising picture of New York (especially Manhattan). For example, New York has more energy-efficient buildings as the nation as a whole. His newer buildings tend to use more energy than older structures. Larger office buildings are often intensive more energy than smaller. And neighborhoods have asthma rates tend to be higher with less energy-efficient buildings.

Here, the information is valuable for building owners, Government, property buyers and energy efficiency service companies.

Builders are visible through the data, how much energy and money - wasting it and corrective measures. City Council gets a better understanding of the programs and policies that help to improve building. Those buying or leasing of real estate get a clear picture of the value of a building. And energy efficiency companies, consultants and energy technology vendors have the opportunity to see where the opportunities lie.

For builders, the participation was relatively painless, after Burr. Took owner details of electricity bills, collected, by creating specifications and other data in a process, the 5 to 15 hours, depending on the complexity of the structure, and ran it through the environmental protection agency energy star Portfolio Manager, a tool to track and evaluation of building performance for the use of energy and water.

New York City had similar information for their 2,657 municipal building, disclosed the total 273 million square meters. All major buildings in the city will participate annually in the comparative. Large residential buildings are slated to report next fall.

"" New York City has just published a great leap for transparency: this is the largest publication ever of the energy bills of performance data from buildings in a city, "said Cliff Majersik, Executive Director of IMT."Markets need information to the function, and this is how much energy the New Yorker know use the buildings around them. It allows key real estate get them information, which have been unavailable until now. "

ELISA Wood is a long-time energy writer. Subscribe its free energy-efficiency newsletter at RealEnergyWriters.com off.

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