City-scale energetics: window on adaptive thermal insulation in North American cities.

Previous research demonstrated that cities are similar to individual mammals in their relationship between the rate of energy use for heating and outdoor air temperature (T). At Ts requiring heating of indoor living spaces, the energy-T plot of a city contains information on city-wide thermal insulation (I), making it possible to quantify city-wide I by use of the city as the unit of measure. We develop methods for extracting this insulation information, deriving the methods from prior research on mammals.