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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 β€œAs 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.)
3711 S VINCENNES AVE
πŸ†
3711 S VINCENNES AVE
Multifamily Housing
3.9 kg/sqft
#24 Lowest
1,180 tons
Lowest 13%
The Sexton Condominium Association
πŸ†
360 W Illinois St
Multifamily Housing
3.9 kg/sqft
#24 Lowest
1,537 tons
Lowest 31%
Bradley Business Center
πŸ†
2500 W Bradley Pl
Other
3.9 kg/sqft
#24 Lowest
1,443 tons
Lowest 26%
Wells Community Academy HS -CPS
πŸ†
936 N Ashland Ave
K-12 School
3.9 kg/sqft
#24 Lowest
1,026 tons
#29 Lowest
Tilden HS -CPS
πŸ†
4747 S Union Ave
K-12 School
3.9 kg/sqft
#24 Lowest
1,272 tons
Lowest 18%
Phillips Academy HS -CPS
πŸ†
244 E Pershing Rd
K-12 School
3.8 kg/sqft
#19 Lowest
1,094 tons
Lowest 7%
Auditorium Building
πŸ†
430 S Michigan Ave
College/University
3.8 kg/sqft
#19 Lowest
2,248 tons
Highest 45%
401 465 E Illinois St
πŸ†
401 465 E Illinois St
Multifamily Housing
3.8 kg/sqft
#19 Lowest
1,511 tons
Lowest 30%
Wentworth Gardens
πŸ†
3770 S Wentworth Ave
Multifamily Housing
3.8 kg/sqft
#19 Lowest
3,155 tons
Highest 29%
Metropolitan Place Condominium Association
πŸ†
130 S Canal St
Multifamily Housing
3.7 kg/sqft
#16 Lowest
2,152 tons
Highest 47%
Dearborn Tower Condominium Association
πŸ†
1530 S State St
Multifamily Housing
3.7 kg/sqft
#16 Lowest
2,754 tons
Highest 34%
Hyatt Chicago Magnificent Mile
πŸ†
633 N St Clair St
Office
3.6 kg/sqft
#13 Lowest
2,252 tons
Highest 45%
329 W 18th St
πŸ†
329 W 18th St
Other
3.6 kg/sqft
#13 Lowest
1,821 tons
Lowest 43%
5252 S CORNELL AVE
πŸ†
5252 S CORNELL AVE
Multifamily Housing
3.6 kg/sqft
#13 Lowest
1,219 tons
Lowest 16%
The ParkShore Condominium Association
πŸ†
195 N Harbor Dr
Multifamily Housing
3.6 kg/sqft
#13 Lowest
3,634 tons
Highest 24%

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