Interactive map shows energy usage in New York City

Tuesday, June 11, 2013, 3:52 PM -

Jon Roberts, a scientist at New York University, has calculated how much energy is consumed, by neighbourhood, in New York City -- and compiled the data into an interactive map.

Users can pinpoint specific regions for more detail.

The map is divided into 175 sections and measured in kilowatt hours -- a unit of energy equal to a power of 1000 watts operating for one hour.

Dark blue represents the smallest energy consumers, while red reflects the biggest offenders.

Carnasie and Flatlands,  is at the bottom of the list, consuming an average of 274 kilowatt hours per person.

Wall Street is on the other end of the scale, gobbling up 6795 kwh per person.

Roberts and his team used publicly-available data, including census information and community survey results, to populate the map.

"We wanted to know who spends the most and the least on energy in New York City, normalised by median income, area, population and number of households," he writes.

"The results can be quite surprising."