Personal Benchmarking

In this Concept Exercise you will benchmark energy use from a house or apartment, ideally one that you are familiar with and previously lived in, against energy use in comparable living units. To work on the exercise, you need access to the electricity and heating bills (typically electricity and natural gas or oil).

Task A Determine EUI and Carbon Emissions per Household

Collect coincident electricity and heating bills for one year. In the US, monthly utility bills usually include energy use from the previous twelve months. Add up monthly uses for electricity and heating and convert them from therm, BTU and other units of energy into kWh. This Energy Conversion Calculator can help. Determine the Energy Use Intensity (EUI) by dividing the sum of energy uses by the floor area of the living unit.

Example For the original New England Home, the annual energy uses for electricity and natural gas are 11,457kWh and 1149therm, respectively. The floor area is 125m2. With 1themr = 29.3kWh the total energy use in kWh corresponds to E= (33,652 kWh + 11,457 kWh)/125m2 = 360kWh/m2 = 114kBTU/ft2.

To convert the energy use into carbon emissions, retrieve currenltt emission factors from Electricity Maps.

Example The August 2024 annual emission factor for electricity in New England and natural gas were 0.286kgCO2e/kWh and 0.231kgCO2e/kWh, respectively. This translated into Emissions = (33,652kWh x 0.286kgCO2e/kWh + 11,457kWh x 0.231kgCO2e ) = 12tCO2e.

Task B Compare EUI To Reference Buildings

Compare the EUI from Task A to those of comparable buildings. For example, in 2024, the Building Performance Database included 207 detached single family homes in Massachusetts with a medium EUI of 31kBTU/ft2 . Only a single building has a high EUI as high as the New England home. Ensure that you compare you building to a sufficiently large sample of similar buildings, generally at least 100 buildings.