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.)
George W Dunne Cook County Office Building 69 W Washington St	Office	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	5,549 tons Highest 13%
Harbor House Condominium Association 3200 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.8 kg/sqft Lowest 34%	2,909 tons Highest 32%
Congress Center 525 W Van Buren	Office	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	3,534 tons Highest 25%
8750 West Bryn Mawr Ave - Triangle Plaza 🏆 8750 W Bryn Mawr Ave	Office	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	5,147 tons Highest 15%
151 N Franklin St 151 N Franklin St	Office	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	6,358 tons Highest 11%
Mallers Building LLC 5 S Wabash Ave	Enclosed Mall	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	2,123 tons Highest 47%
Association House of Chicago 1116 N Kedzie Ave	Office	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	1,028 tons Lowest 2%
250 S Wacker Dr 250 S Wacker Dr	Office	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	1,687 tons Lowest 37%
Flair Tower 222 W Erie St	Multifamily Housing	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	1,718 tons Lowest 39%
River West Lofts 925 W HURON ST	Multifamily Housing	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	1,192 tons Lowest 14%
Jefferson Tower CA 200 N Jefferson St	Multifamily Housing	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	1,527 tons Lowest 31%
Grandville Tower Condominiums 6166 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	1,308 tons Lowest 20%
1000 South Clark 1000 S CLARK ST	Multifamily Housing	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	2,985 tons Highest 31%
1400 South Michigan 1400 S Michigan Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	2,290 tons Highest 43%
Maple Pointe Apartments 150 W Maple St	Multifamily Housing	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	1,882 tons Lowest 44%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data