Changes in New York City Commercial and Residential Energy Consumption during COVID-19

This study compares the energy consumption of New York City office buildings and personal residences during a normal year versus the lockdown period of the COVID-19 pandemic. The goal of this study is to determine whether it is more energy efficient for employees to work in-person in an office building, or to work remotely in their own personal residence. The scope of this analysis consists of employees travelling from the major residential areas surrounding New York City (i.e. the five boroughs and surrounding counties) commuting to a hypothetical representative office building in midtown Manhattan. Parameters for this building (e.g. number of floors, square footage) were obtained by taking the average data from all of the office buildings in this area of Manhattan, and served as the destination for the employees in the analysis. Energy consumption per person was calculated based on building usage (e.g. HVAC and hot water) and commuting mode.

The results indicate that working remotely consumed less energy per person compared to employees returning to work in their office building.The major energy consumption per person from our analysis was due to commuting via public transportation (e.g. bus or subway) or personal vehicle. This analysis can serve as a starting point of discussion for local policymakers to manage commercial office spaces and public transportation utilization during the COVID-19 pandemic. Future work on this topic can utilize more robust data compared to the publicly available data set employed in this analysis, as well as using a larger set of office buildings compared to the representative one used in this study.