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.)
Hyde Park Academy HS -CPS 6220 S Stony Island Ave	K-12 School	6.5 kg/sqft Lowest 29%	2,112 tons Highest 48%
Kinzie Station 330 N Jefferson Ct	Multifamily Housing	6.5 kg/sqft Lowest 29%	1,468 tons Lowest 28%
One Museum Park South 1901 S Calumet Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.5 kg/sqft Lowest 29%	2,716 tons Highest 34%
Lowell House 88 W Schiller St	Multifamily Housing	6.5 kg/sqft Lowest 29%	1,806 tons Lowest 42%
The New York Private Residences 3660 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.5 kg/sqft Lowest 29%	4,037 tons Highest 21%
2020 Lincoln Park West Condominium Association 2020 N Lincoln Park West	Multifamily Housing	6.5 kg/sqft Lowest 29%	2,810 tons Highest 33%
1251 S. Michigan Avenue 1251 S. Michigan Avenue	Multifamily Housing	6.5 kg/sqft Lowest 29%	4,028 tons Highest 21%
Harbor Point 155 N Harbor Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.5 kg/sqft Lowest 29%	7,760 tons Highest 9%
Park Tower Condominium Association 5415 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	6.5 kg/sqft Lowest 29%	5,611 tons Highest 13%
Aon Center 🚩 200 E Randolph St	Office	6.5 kg/sqft Lowest 29%	20,741 tons #22 Highest
Imperial Towers Condominium 🚩 4250 N Marine Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.5 kg/sqft Lowest 29%	7,274 tons Highest 9%
Hyatt Regency Chicago 🚩 151 E Wacker Dr	Hotel	6.5 kg/sqft Lowest 29%	13,219 tons #49 Highest
Malibu East Condominium 6033 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 27%	6,357 tons Highest 11%
One South Dearborn 1 S Dearborn	Office	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 27%	6,042 tons Highest 12%
525 W Monroe St 525 W Monroe St	Office	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 27%	6,534 tons Highest 11%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data