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.)
Twenty N. State Condominium Association 20 N State St	Multifamily Housing	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	1,444 tons Lowest 27%
Lakeside Tower Condo Association 1600 S Indiana Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	1,650 tons Lowest 35%
Linea Apartments 211 221 W LAKE ST	Multifamily Housing	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	1,949 tons Lowest 47%
850 858 N LAKESHORE DR 850 858 N LAKESHORE DR	Multifamily Housing	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	1,703 tons Lowest 38%
820 S PARK TER 820 S PARK TER	Multifamily Housing	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	1,075 tons Lowest 5%
Fine Arts Building 🏆 408 410 S Michigan Ave	Office	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	1,091 tons Lowest 6%
Promontory Apartments 5530 S SHORE DR	Multifamily Housing	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	1,231 tons Lowest 16%
Kingsbury on the Park 653 N Kingsbury St	Multifamily Housing	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	1,903 tons Lowest 45%
211 E Chicago Ave 211 E Chicago Ave	Office	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	2,685 tons Highest 35%
2930 N SHERIDAN RD 2930 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	1,636 tons Lowest 35%
Hermitage on Huron Condominium Association 70 W Huron St	Multifamily Housing	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	1,791 tons Lowest 42%
Judge Frederick W. Slater Apartments 740 E 43rd St	Multifamily Housing	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	1,701 tons Lowest 38%
The Jewelers Building 35 E Wacker Dr	Office	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	4,192 tons Highest 20%
1111 N. Dearborn St 1111 N. Dearborn St	Multifamily Housing	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	2,236 tons Highest 45%
Presence Resurrection Retirement Community 7262 W Peterson Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	2,764 tons Highest 34%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data