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.)
Parc Chestnut Condominium Association 849 N Franklin St	Multifamily Housing	7.5 kg/sqft Lowest 46%	2,838 tons Highest 33%
162 North State Street 162 N State St	Residence Hall/Dormitory	7.5 kg/sqft Lowest 46%	2,373 tons Highest 42%
Senn Achievement Academy -CPS 5900 N Glenwood Ave	K-12 School	7.5 kg/sqft Lowest 46%	2,179 tons Highest 46%
Americana Towers Condominium 1636 N Wells St	Multifamily Housing	7.5 kg/sqft Lowest 46%	2,651 tons Highest 35%
200 E. Delaware Condominium Association 200 E Delaware Pl	Multifamily Housing	7.5 kg/sqft Lowest 46%	2,557 tons Highest 37%
Third Prairie Shores, LLC 3001 S King Dr	Multifamily Housing	7.5 kg/sqft Lowest 46%	2,161 tons Highest 47%
Clark-Adams 105 W Adams St	Office	7.5 kg/sqft Lowest 46%	3,664 tons Highest 24%
Renaissance Chicago Downtown 1 W Wacker Dr	Hotel	7.5 kg/sqft Lowest 46%	4,017 tons Highest 21%
233 N Michigan Ave 233 N Michigan Ave	Office	7.5 kg/sqft Lowest 46%	8,698 tons Highest 8%
CNA Building 🚩 333 S Wabash Ave	Office	7.5 kg/sqft Lowest 46%	10,566 tons Highest 6%
200 W Madison 200 W Madison	Office	7.4 kg/sqft Lowest 45%	7,400 tons Highest 9%
120 North LaSalle 120 N LaSalle St	Office	7.4 kg/sqft Lowest 45%	3,401 tons Highest 26%
20 W Kinzie St 20 W Kinzie St	Office	7.4 kg/sqft Lowest 45%	2,918 tons Highest 32%
1155 E 60th St (UChicago) 1155 E 60th St	College/University	7.4 kg/sqft Lowest 45%	1,375 tons Lowest 23%
The Franklin 🚩 227 W Monroe	Office	7.4 kg/sqft Lowest 45%	22,015 tons #16 Highest

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data