Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The U.S. federal government sets minimum energy efficiency standards for many commonly used household appliances. GIS has served as the ideal tool for aiding in the analysis and visualization of geographic patterns related to energy use in the United States. By overlaying climate, energy consumption, appliance use, economic and demographic data in ArcView, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been able to model the effects of proposed national appliance standards on the population. The creation of standards is a closely scrutinized process with many stakeholders, so the ability to analyze and present predictions for subpopulations geographically provides useful intermediate results to process participants.