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.)
1150 Condominium Association 1150 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	1,607 tons Lowest 34%
Central Standard Building 231 S LaSalle St	Office	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	7,877 tons Highest 8%
Marquee at Block 37 25 West Randolph Street	Multifamily Housing	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	3,957 tons Highest 22%
One North State 1 N State St	Office	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	5,527 tons Highest 13%
757 Orleans at Chicago Condominium 757 N Orleans St	Multifamily Housing	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	2,121 tons Highest 48%
Armour Square Apartments 3120 3250 S Wentworth Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	2,104 tons Highest 48%
The Streeter 345 E Ohio St	Multifamily Housing	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	5,284 tons Highest 14%
4343 Clarendon Condominium Association 4343 N Clarendon Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.7 kg/sqft Lowest 33%	2,824 tons Highest 33%
Leo Burnett Building 35 W Wacker Dr	Office	6.6 kg/sqft Lowest 31%	9,225 tons Highest 7%
100 E Walton CA 100 E Walton St	Multifamily Housing	6.6 kg/sqft Lowest 31%	2,146 tons Highest 47%
190 N State St 190 N State St	Office	6.6 kg/sqft Lowest 31%	1,507 tons Lowest 30%
Mayfair 189 E Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.6 kg/sqft Lowest 31%	1,129 tons Lowest 9%
Spoke Apartments 728 N Morgan St	Multifamily Housing	6.6 kg/sqft Lowest 31%	2,307 tons Highest 43%
Century Tower 182 W Lake St	Multifamily Housing	6.6 kg/sqft Lowest 31%	1,683 tons Lowest 37%
Zelda Ormes Senior Apartments 116 W Elm St	Multifamily Housing	6.6 kg/sqft Lowest 31%	1,046 tons Lowest 4%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data