The Bay Area Energy Atlas is a database of building energy consumption that links PG\&E metered energy consumption to building characteristics, sociodemographic data, and other significant attributes. This website is a public data resource that displays spatially aggregated annual energy consumption statistics for the nine Bay Area counties.

The ability to associate energy consumption with buildings and population information allows users to ask deeper questions about how energy is being used. For example, what types of buildings in Alameda County have the highest energy intensity per unit area? How does energy consumption vary spatially, by population density, by income level, or by industry? How does energy consumption compare between single family homes in coastal Half Moon Bay and inland Vacaville? These types of fundamental questions are impossible to answer without a spatial database that merges these datasets together.

Buildings are responsible for roughly 40% of GHG emissions in the United States. The Energy Atlas project provides Californians, and those interested in ongoing energy transitions, with the opportunity to interact with one of the largest sets of disaggregated building energy data available in the nation. This interactive tool is used by a wide variety of stakeholder groups to inform energy planning and research throughout California. As creators of this tool, our mission is to provide transparency and access to critical energy data to achieve the state’s ambitious energy and climate goals. All the front-end website data is aggregated to protect individual customer privacy in accordance with CPUC guidelines, and is freely downloadable in CSV format.

The Energy Atlas is developed by the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA, housed within the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, in partnership with and funded by the Bay Area Regional Energy Network.

Features of the Atlas

Interactive Maps

The maps visually display energy consumption across counties, census places, zip code tabulation areas, and census tract, as well as by building type, and type of energy. Users can view data as total consumption, median consumption, median per square foot consumption and per capita consumption. Three of the map pages provide another element of detail: building size, building vintage, and residential income (area median income). Each consumption value is calculated from individual meters and aggregated to protect customer privacy. Some areas are masked to protect customer privacy.

Screenshot of the Building Type map view set to show the total natural gas consumption of buildings categorized as Single-Family by Counties for all months and all years.

Profiles

The Profiles page provides detailed information and comparisons for each geography level including longitudinal data from 2015-2021 where available. Users can download data specific to the filtered Profiles page view through the controls in the upper right-hand corner of the Profile page, while the complete data will also be available for download through the Data Download page.

Screenshot of the very top of the Profiles page, showing the filter selection bar as well as the first bar graph, which displayed the summed total of the selected counties.

Findings

The data stories available in the Findings page analyze relationships and trends among variables, including energy use and building characteristics such as age of buildings, square footage, use type, and sociodemographic characteristics. This section of the website will be updated regularly and will welcome data discoveries from stakeholders, researchers, and the curious.

Data Download

Download complete CSV versions of the aggregated data presented in the Atlas via the Data Download page.

A Note About Updates

With the challenge of standardizing and combining large and complex datasets, the Atlas should be thought of as a constantly evolving and improving tool. As technology improves and UCLA is able to enhance various aspects of the energy aggregation statistics, data on the Atlas website may change. We strive to produce the most accurate results possible. However, given the existing limitations outlined in the Limitations section of the website, our results have certain intrinsic sources of error. We are constantly working to improve this tool and the valuable data outputs used for important policy and planning applications. If you have a question about specific geographic energy consumption statistics, please reach out to CCSC.

Applications and Benefits

The Energy Atlas allows for the generation of new knowledge and a greater understanding of building energy use by integrating contextual data sets with energy consumption information. The central data sets include:

  • Demographic data from the United States Census Bureau American Community Survey, including median household income, population, and renter/owner percentage.
  • Building attributes from County Assessor data, including building size, vintage, and use type.

The combination of data provides insights into relationships essential to the development of effective and targeted programs that maximize energy savings and investments. The Energy Atlas creates a baseline of energy use data against which program implementation can be evaluated efficiently and affordably. It is a valuable tool for policy makers, researchers, and the public to ensure that the state is successful in its goals to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. The Atlas has important benefits to regions including:

  • Assisting local governments in consolidating and coordinating climate action planning and energy reduction efforts across the region by providing region-wide energy data.
  • Helping individual local governments to improve climate action and energy reduction efforts by providing analytics tailored to specific geographies within the region.
  • Assisting in the identification of communities for additional investments.

About the CCSC

The mission of the California Center for Sustainable Communities, founded and directed by Dr. Stephanie Pincetl, is to create actionable science that improves the sustainability of urban systems. It aims to provide intellectual and conceptual frameworks for new synthesis and thinking in sustainability research for all Californians. For cities to remain habitable, profound changes need to occur both in cities themselves and in the ways they impact the surrounding landscapes and hinterlands. Achieving progress toward sustainability requires maintaining and improving both human and ecosystem well-being. Our challenge is to make cities into centers of sustainability in the ways they develop and redevelop beyond the next century.