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.)
340 West Superior Condominium Association 340 W Superior St	Multifamily Housing	5.3 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	1,506 tons Lowest 30%
Manley Career Academy HS -CPS 2935 W Polk St	K-12 School	5.3 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	1,137 tons Lowest 10%
Sixty Thirty Condominium Association 6030 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	5.3 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	1,554 tons Lowest 32%
Chicago Residential Inc. 2440 N Lakeview Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.3 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	1,329 tons Lowest 21%
2970 N SHERIDAN RD 2970 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	5.3 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	1,303 tons Lowest 20%
New Englewood Terrace Apartments 6425 S Lowe	Multifamily Housing	5.3 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	1,718 tons Lowest 39%
Sullivan Center 1 S State St	Office	5.3 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	5,142 tons Highest 15%
680 North Lake Shore Drive 680 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	5.3 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	8,773 tons Highest 8%
200 West Adams St. 200 W Adams St	Office	5.2 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	4,084 tons Highest 20%
North Harbor Tower 175 N Harbor Dr	Multifamily Housing	5.2 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	2,982 tons Highest 31%
400 W Ontario St 400 W Ontario St	Multifamily Housing	5.2 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	1,177 tons Lowest 13%
933 Van Buren Condominium Association 933 W Van Buren St	Multifamily Housing	5.2 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	1,573 tons Lowest 33%
Moment Chicago 545 McClurg Ct	Multifamily Housing	5.2 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	3,780 tons Highest 23%
Optima Chicago Center 200 E Illinios St	Multifamily Housing	5.2 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	2,959 tons Highest 31%
347 W Chestnut St 347 W Chestnut St	Multifamily Housing	5.2 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	2,152 tons Highest 47%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data