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Electrify Chicago

According to the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan(opens in a new tab), 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.

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(opens in a new tab). 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.

Property Name / address Primary Property Type Greenhouse Gas Intensity
(kg CO2 eq./sqft)
Total Greenhouse Emissions
(metric tons CO2 eq.)
Hilliard Homes Limited Partnership (Senior)
2111 S Clark Ave
Multifamily Housing
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
1,617 tons
Lowest 34%
6640 50 W Belden Ave
6640 50 W Belden Ave
Multifamily Housing
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
1,815 tons
Lowest 43%
Chicago Mag Mile Courtyard
165 E Ontario St
Hotel
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
1,772 tons
Lowest 41%
2101 South Michigan Apartments
🏆
2101 S Michigan Ave
Multifamily Housing
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
1,277 tons
Lowest 18%
Foreman HS, Edwin G -CPS
3235 N Leclaire Ave
K-12 School
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
1,453 tons
Lowest 27%
5630 N Sheridan Ave
5630 N Sheridan Ave
Multifamily Housing
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
1,477 tons
Lowest 28%
Hubbard221
221 W Hubbard St
Multifamily Housing
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
1,953 tons
Lowest 47%
Cornell Village
5201 S Cornell Ave
Multifamily Housing
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
1,800 tons
Lowest 42%
Belmont Tower Apartments
510 W Belmont Ave
Multifamily Housing
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
1,738 tons
Lowest 40%
Patrick F Sullivan Apts
1633 W Madison St
Multifamily Housing
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
2,286 tons
Highest 43%
RiverView Condominium Association
445 E North Water St
Multifamily Housing
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
5,168 tons
Highest 15%
University Center Chicago
525 S State St
Multifamily Housing
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
4,189 tons
Highest 20%
30 N LaSalle St
30 N LaSalle St
Office
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
6,795 tons
Highest 10%
Lawless Gardens
🚩
3510 S RHODES AVE
Multifamily Housing
6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 23%
4,614 tons
Highest 18%
The Carlyle Condominium Association
1040 N Lake Shore Dr
Multifamily Housing
6.1 kg/sqft
Lowest 21%
3,069 tons
Highest 30%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data (opens in a new tab)