Electrify Chicago

According to the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan, a whopping 69% of Chicago's emissions come from buildings, making it our biggest challenge and our biggest opportunity as a city to tackle change. At Electrify Chicago we want to showcase some of the best and worst performing buildings in the city using publicly available data and manual annotations to add building photographs and label multi-building owners like universities.

2017 GHG Emissions -
31M metric tons CO2 equivalent
69% buildings
24% transportation
7% waste

Chicago 2022 CAP

You can start by looking at Chicago's buildings with the highest greenhouse gas intensity - this means that they use the most energy when adjusted per unit of square foot, so big buildings could actually perform much better than very inefficient small buildings on this metric.

Chicago Buildings by Greenhouse Gas Intensity

Note: Data only includes large Chicago buildings from 2020

Note: This data only includes buildings whose emissions are reported under the Chicago Energy Benchmarking Ordinance. According to the City “As of 2016, this list includes all commercial, institutional, and residential buildings larger than 50,000 square feet.” This dataset is also then filtered to only buildings with reported emissions > 1,000 metric tons CO₂ equivalent.

This data is also from 2020, but when new benchmark data is available, we'll update the site.

Chicago 2022 CAP

Property Name / address	Primary Property Type	Greenhouse Gas Intensity (kg CO₂ eq./sqft)	Total Greenhouse Emissions (metric tons CO₂ eq.)
Dawson Technical Institute 3901 S State St	College/University	9.6 kg/sqft Highest 32%	1,426 tons Lowest 25%
Target, Chicago Peterson Ave (2079) 2112 W Peterson Ave	Retail Store	9.6 kg/sqft Highest 32%	1,542 tons Lowest 31%
Headquarters 547 W Jackson Blvd	Office	9.6 kg/sqft Highest 32%	3,328 tons Highest 27%
Orr Academy HS -CPS 730 N Pulaski Rd	K-12 School	9.6 kg/sqft Highest 32%	2,907 tons Highest 32%
The Van Buren 808 W Van Buren	Multifamily Housing	9.6 kg/sqft Highest 32%	1,133 tons Lowest 10%
Carson, Rachel Elementary -CPS 5516 S Maplewood Ave	K-12 School	9.6 kg/sqft Highest 32%	1,332 tons Lowest 21%
North Grand HS -CPS 4330 W Wabansia Ave	K-12 School	9.6 kg/sqft Highest 32%	1,961 tons Lowest 47%
The Seneca 200 E Chestnut St	Multifamily Housing	9.6 kg/sqft Highest 32%	1,620 tons Lowest 34%
Old Town Park 1140 N Wells St	Multifamily Housing	9.6 kg/sqft Highest 32%	3,000 tons Highest 30%
30 East Huron Condominium Association 30 40 E Huron St	Multifamily Housing	9.6 kg/sqft Highest 32%	5,317 tons Highest 14%
The Grand Ohio 211 E Ohio St	Multifamily Housing	9.6 kg/sqft Highest 32%	5,441 tons Highest 14%
600 Fulton Owner, LLC 600 W Fulton St	Office	9.5 kg/sqft Highest 33%	2,248 tons Highest 45%
Target, Chicago South Pulaski (1879) 4433 S Pulaski Rd	Retail Store	9.5 kg/sqft Highest 33%	1,146 tons Lowest 11%
Haymarket Center 932 W Washington Blvd	Residential Care Facility	9.5 kg/sqft Highest 33%	1,433 tons Lowest 26%
Bernard Horwich Building 3003 3033 W TOUHY AVE	Mixed Use Property	9.5 kg/sqft Highest 33%	1,572 tons Lowest 33%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data