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.)
3800 N. Lake Shore Drive 3800 Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.1 kg/sqft Lowest 21%	1,510 tons Lowest 30%
Lakeside Square Apartments 920 W Lakeside Pl	Multifamily Housing	6.1 kg/sqft Lowest 21%	1,690 tons Lowest 37%
LaSalle-Wacker Building 221 N LaSalle St	Office	6.1 kg/sqft Lowest 21%	3,178 tons Highest 28%
100 Bellevue Place 100 E Bellevue Pl	Multifamily Housing	6.1 kg/sqft Lowest 21%	2,137 tons Highest 47%
3150 CA 3150 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.1 kg/sqft Lowest 21%	3,040 tons Highest 30%
John Hancock 55 W Monroe	Office	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	5,401 tons Highest 14%
4 E Elm Condos 4 E ELM ST	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,175 tons Lowest 13%
One One One Morgan 111 S Morgan St	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,138 tons Lowest 10%
Aloft Chicago Mag Mile (Marriott) 243 E Ontario St	Hotel	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,147 tons Lowest 11%
565 W Quincy 565 W Quincy St	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	2,281 tons Highest 44%
4100 Marine Dr 4100 N Marine Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,503 tons Lowest 30%
The Bernardin 747 N Wabash Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,735 tons Lowest 40%
1936 N Clark 1936 N Clark	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,063 tons Lowest 5%
Vue53 1330 E 53RD ST	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,685 tons Lowest 37%
Lake Village East Apartments 4700 S Lake Park Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,072 tons Lowest 5%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data