A Columbia University study has plotted the energy use of New York City's buildings on a beautiful, interactive map where you can view energy consumption by block. The map really illuminates how different areas of the city, and the types of buildings located in those areas, use energy differently.

In New York, buildings account for two-thirds of the energy used by the city, a major reason that the city has pushed for retrofitting programs. This new map can help city officials know where to concentrate their improvements.

The model uses data from a few sources to arrive at the block by block totals:

• Data the city government gathered from utilities on zip-code level numbers on electricity, natural gas, fuel oil, and steam consumption in 2009,
• Data on how the energy was used (heating and cooling, water heating, lighting, etc.) from the U.S. Energy information Administration
• Information on the building floor areas of each of the city’s tax lots from the city government.

You can visit the fully interactive map here, where you can view the total yearly kWh used per block, total fuel use and total land area. Each block also has its own pie chart with the breakdown of how that energy use was distributed among space heating, space cooling, water heating and general electricity use.

via MIT Tech Review

Within a week of each other, Google and Microsoft both announced that they were pulling the plug on their home energy management services after only two years of them being active.

Last week, Google said that it was giving up on its PowerMeter online software that allowed people to track their home energy use and pinpoint ways make their home more efficient and end up with cheaper electricity bills.  The reason was that not enough people and utilities were signing up for the free service.

Microsoft has given the same reason for ending its Hohm service, a similar program that offered a sleeker interface and a greater depth of information regarding consumer's energy use patterns and the related costs.  Hohm was also free, but Microsoft had planned to make it into a paid service.

Home energy monitoring and management is a necessary part of lowering our overall energy use and living more sustainably, but it's possible these programs were launched a little too soon.  When smart grid technology starts reaching more areas of the country and people start becoming more accustomed to using technology to tweak their energy use habits, these type of programs will be more popular, but it seems the interest just wasn't there yet.

via Earth2Tech