As part of MIT’s 2015 Plan for Action on Climate Change, MIT’s new central data dashboard, Energize_MIT, provides details about energy use and carbon emissions on campus. While the website currently in its beta form will be accessible to students, faculty and staff, its impact on research and building modeling could provide critical energy use data in the future for FMs.
Energize_MIT will include two types of information: graphic representations of data and highly detailed datasets. The interactive graphic visualizations will represent data on a campus-wide or building-by-building basis for electricity, natural gas, fuel oil, steam and chilled water, as well as greenhouse gas emissions. The datasets can be downloaded and examine the finer details of energy use, such as energy consumption measurements in 15-minute intervals.
“Energize_MIT is an invaluable tool not just for helping us to better understand and manage campus energy use, but also for engaging the MIT community in finding ways to reduce our energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions,” says Maria T. Zuber, Vice President for Research at MIT. “This is an important part of MIT’s climate action plan. I am grateful to the members of the Energize_MIT team for their hard work in bringing this platform online.”
The hope is for faculty and students to analyze and model energy use for the buildings on campus with this data. From there, building-specific findings could help impact similar facilities looking to improve energy efficiency.
“The new data hub is an excellent initiative that will empower groups from across MIT to better understand how our campus operates and to propose a plethora of interventions to make our lives more comfortable and productive, as well as to enhance our buildings’ resource efficiency,” says Christoph Reinhart, Associate Professor of Architecture.
The website will later include not only the MIT campus, but also MIT-leased buildings and a solar plant in North Carolina built through an MIT-led power purchase agreement. Energize_MIT is just one part in a larger plan to provide sustainability resources and information that will be expanded later this year.
