Evidence shows that biological organisms tend to be more energetically efficient per unit size. These scaling patterns observed in biological organisms have also been observed in the energetic requirements of cities. However, at lower levels of organization where energetic interventions can be more manageable, such as buildings, this analysis has remained more elusive due to the difficulties in collecting fine-grained data. Here, we use the maintenance energy usage in buildings at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 2009 to 2024 to analyze energetic trends at the scale of individual buildings and their sensitivity to strong external perturbations. We find that, similar to the baseline metabolism of biological organisms, large buildings are on average $24\%$ more energetically efficient per unit size than smaller buildings. Because it has become debatable how to better measure the efficiency of buildings, this scaling pattern naturally establishes a baseline efficiency for buildings, where deviations from the mean would imply a more or less efficient building than the baseline according to volume. This relative efficiency progressively increased to $34\%$ until 2020. However, the strong activity disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic acted as a major shock, removing this trend and leading to a reversal to the expected $24\%$ baseline level. This suggests that energetic adaptations are contingent on relatively stable conditions.

翻译：证据表明，生物体往往在单位尺寸上具有更高的能量效率。在生物体中观察到的这种尺度规律，在城市能量需求中也同样存在。然而，在能量干预更易管理的较低组织层级，如建筑物，由于难以收集细粒度数据，此类分析一直较为困难。本文利用麻省理工学院（MIT）2009年至2024年建筑的维持性能量使用数据，分析单个建筑尺度的能量趋势及其对强外部扰动的敏感性。我们发现，与生物体的基础代谢类似，大型建筑在单位尺寸上的平均能量效率比小型建筑高$24\%$。由于如何更好地衡量建筑效率存在争议，这一尺度规律自然为建筑确立了基准效率，相对于均值的偏离意味着建筑根据其体积高于或低于基准效率。这一相对效率在2020年前逐步提升至$34\%$。然而，COVID-19大流行造成的强活动干扰作为一次重大冲击，消除了这一趋势，并导致效率回归至预期的$24\%$基准水平。这表明能量适应依赖于相对稳定的条件。