Abstract - Executive Summary

\label{abstract---executive-summary}
New York City has pledged to reduce 80% of its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 (in relation to 2005 levels). Since about two thirds of the city’s emissions come from building’s energy use, understanding the energy performance of the city’s buildings is vital to meet that target. To gauge this energy efficiency performance in a fair comparison, this paper develops a new scoring method to rank the buildings in terms of energy efficiency based on benchmarking data from Local Law 84 (LL84) and NYC Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output (PLUTO).
This scoring method is based on a model built predict the energy use intensity (EUI) of each building and trained on data corresponding to one specific year. Once the EUI is predicted, the score is calculated from the ratio between predicted and actual EUI, which is then ranked by percentile. As a result, every building receives a score to evaluate its performance. The score is an attempt of making a fair comparison of energy performance among buildings with different physical characteristics, occupancy and use patterns, which will be sent to the each building owner in a scorecard to inform their performance and foster behavioral change towards a more efficient use of energy.