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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.)
Mundelein Center
1020 W Sheridan Rd
College/University
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
1,670 tons
Lowest 36%
The Heritage at Millennium Park
130 N Garland Ct
Multifamily Housing
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
7,533 tons
Highest 9%
Sherway Tower
4225 N SHERIDAN RD
Multifamily Housing
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
1,280 tons
Lowest 19%
6 N Michigan Ave
6 N Michigan Ave
Multifamily Housing
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
1,860 tons
Lowest 44%
40 E Oak St
40 E Oak St
Multifamily Housing
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
1,243 tons
Lowest 17%
(IL337)- Museum Park Place
1841 S Calumet Ave
Multifamily Housing
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
2,439 tons
Highest 40%
Museum Park Tower 1 Condominium Association
1322 S Prairie Ave
Multifamily Housing
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
2,272 tons
Highest 44%
345 Fullerton Parkway Condominium Association
345 W Fullerton Pkwy
Multifamily Housing
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
2,360 tons
Highest 42%
Two East Oak Condominium Association
2 E Oak St
Multifamily Housing
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
2,066 tons
Lowest 50%
Fourth Prairie Shores, LLC
2851 S King Dr
Multifamily Housing
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
2,344 tons
Highest 42%
230 W Monroe
230 W Monroe
Office
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
5,477 tons
Highest 14%
Wright College
4300 N Narragansett
College/University
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
4,384 tons
Highest 19%
208 S La Salle Whole Building
208 S LaSalle St
Hotel
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
7,325 tons
Highest 9%
Lake Grove Village Bldg 1
3500 S LAKE PARK AVE
Multifamily Housing
8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
3,751 tons
Highest 23%
Chicago Board of Trade Building
🚩
141 W Jackson Blvd
Office
8.0 kg/sqft
Highest 46%
12,507 tons
Highest 4%

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