The Tool for Rapid Assessment of City Energy (TRACE) offers cities a quick and easy way to assess their energy efficiency and identify sectors to improve. This tool prioritizes sectors with significant energy savings potential, and identifies appropriate energy efficiency interventions across six sectors—transport, buildings, water and waste water, public lighting, solid waste, and power and heat. It is a simple, low-cost, user-friendly, and practical tool that can be applied in any socioeconomic setting.  

TRACE consists of two principal components: (i) a city energy benchmarking tool and (ii) a "playbook" of tried and tested energy efficiency interventions. These two components are woven into a user-friendly software application that takes the city through a series of sequential steps: from initial data gathering to a report containing a matrix of energy efficiency recommendations tailored to the city’s individual context, with implementation and financing options.  The steps are as follows:

1. Collection of Candidate City Energy Use Data
 

TRACE contains a database of 28 key performance indicators (KPIs) collected from 50 cities. Each of the data points that make up these KPIs is collected prior to the application of the tool and, as TRACE is launched, this collection of information will grow with current and reliable data. Table 1 shows a list of KPIs by sector. 

2. Analysis of City Energy Use Against Peer Cities
 

The performance of a city is compared with a range of peer cities—selected by the city based on population, climate, and human development—to determine their performance in each of the six sectors (3-6 KPIs per sector). The benchmarking process provides an overview of energy performance so the city can assess its relative rankings against peer cities in each sector.