Modeling urban energy demand and usage for New York City coupled with climate data

Earth’s climate is ever changing, however, due to anthropogenic factors such as land use change, emission of greenhouse gasses, etc., the average global temperature is rising. With global temperatures increasing, regional extreme heat events are becoming more common and are now influencing populations that lack experience and preparedness to cope with these life threatening events. This has caused an immense demand for conditioned air to cool indoor spaces and buildings, especially in regions of extremely dense urban sprawl. Extreme heat events pose multiple threats in daily life. Humans can only withstand temperatures at a certain moderate level. When the temperature and heat index increase to an unhealthy or even life-threatening level, actions must be taken to protect the population. This causes a significant disruption to the economy as businesses must increase the use of air conditioning in their buildings and subsequently spend more, as well, heat affects the amount of time a human can work safely outdoors (construction, maintenance, etc.), and the time value of money is negatively affected when the workforce is compromised. While the introduction of air conditioning as a standard home feature decreases the harsh effects heat has on a population, it comes along with a major cost economically and environmentally. This cost is associated with the extreme energy use needed to maintain the cooling load demand from indoor environments during heat events. A great example of this can be seen in the most populous city in the United States, New York City. When the New York City metro is affected by extreme heat events, as well as dealing with the Urban Heat Island effect, it can create extremely dangerous and life threatening conditions from heat and heat related incidents/illnesses. The extreme use of energy increases the effects the urban heat island has on the city and creates a two-way feedback: the extreme energy use worsens the UHI which then causes a larger need for conditioned air. To offset this hazard, and the uncomfortable feeling of extreme heat, air conditioning is widely and continuously used to cool down the largest city in America. The energy use associated with this cooling load demand can be, at times, between one third to one-half of NYC's total peak summer energy use of more than 10 GW. This puts a significant stress on energy distribution, and an overall great stress on the grid, which is being tested all over the country by extreme weather events of all types. We seek to estimate the amount of energy used for cooling, the individual burden citizens will have to carry because of the increased necessity of air conditioning, and the effects these events have on the well being of life for the NYC metro. To accomplish this, the study focuses on evaluating New York City’s energy use as a whole, then carrying out a more precise study of each of New York City’s five boroughs: The Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. We use both utility records and urbanized climate models to characterize summer peak energy demands for the whole city and at per borough level.