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Electrify Chicago

According to the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan(opens in a new tab), 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.

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(opens in a new tab). 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.

Property Name / address Primary Property Type Greenhouse Gas Intensity
(kg CO2 eq./sqft)
Total Greenhouse Emissions
(metric tons CO2 eq.)
Hyatt Center
🚩
71 S Wacker Dr
Office
8.6 kg/sqft
Highest 39%
14,570 tons
#42 Highest
Lakeview 3200
3218 N CLARK ST
Multifamily Housing
8.6 kg/sqft
Highest 39%
1,165 tons
Lowest 12%
Hollywood House
5700 N Sheridan Rd
Multifamily Housing
8.6 kg/sqft
Highest 39%
1,292 tons
Lowest 19%
57135-Chicago-Downtown
201 E Walton Pl
Hotel
8.6 kg/sqft
Highest 39%
1,528 tons
Lowest 31%
Wells Street Tower Condominium Association
701 S Wells St
Multifamily Housing
8.6 kg/sqft
Highest 39%
2,308 tons
Highest 43%
541 N Fairbanks
541 N Fairbanks
Office
8.6 kg/sqft
Highest 39%
6,166 tons
Highest 12%
First Praire Shores, LLC
2901 S King Dr
Multifamily Housing
8.6 kg/sqft
Highest 39%
2,484 tons
Highest 39%
Park Millennium Condominium Association.
222 N Columbus Dr
Multifamily Housing
8.6 kg/sqft
Highest 39%
5,004 tons
Highest 16%
Fairbanks at Cityfront Plaza
240 E Illinois St
Multifamily Housing
8.6 kg/sqft
Highest 39%
5,072 tons
Highest 15%
Water Tower Place
🚩
845 N Michigan Ave
Mixed Use Property
8.6 kg/sqft
Highest 39%
22,117 tons
#15 Highest
6526 N Winthrop
6526 N Winthrop
College/University
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
1,083 tons
Lowest 6%
611 S. Wells Street Condo (The Vetro)
611 S Wells St
Multifamily Housing
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
2,470 tons
Highest 39%
134 N. LaSalle LLC
134 N LaSalle St
Office
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
1,733 tons
Lowest 40%
Gray Elementary -CPS
3730 N Laramie Ave
K-12 School
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
1,101 tons
Lowest 7%
Mondial River West
910 W Huron St
Multifamily Housing
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
1,452 tons
Lowest 27%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data (opens in a new tab)