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.
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.
Note: This data only includes buildings whose emissions are reported under the Chicago Energy Benchmarking Ordinance. According to the City βAs of 2016, this list includes all commercial, institutional, and residential buildings larger than 50,000 square feet.β This dataset is also then filtered to only buildings with reported emissions > 1,000 metric tons.
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/sqft) |
Total Greenhouse Emissions (metric tons CO2) |
---|---|---|---|
Gordon Center for Integrative Science (GCIS)
π©
929 E 57th St
| Laboratory | 35.9 #16 Highest
| 17,199 #34 Highest
|
Pete's Pulaski
π©
4343 S Pulaski Rd
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 35.6 #17 Highest
| 1,994
Lowest 48%
|
Pete's 118th
π©
3454 - 3620 E 118th St
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 35.3 #18 Highest
| 1,905
Lowest 45%
|
320 E Superior Street
π©
320 E Superior Street
| Laboratory | 34.7 #19 Highest
| 6,477
Highest 11%
|
Pete's Madison
π©
2333 W Madison
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 34.0 #20 Highest
| 2,241
Highest 45%
|
Pete's Cermak
π©
2526 W Cermak Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 33.1 #21 Highest
| 2,448
Highest 39%
|
Life Science Research Building
π©
(Illinois Tech)
35 W 34th Street
| College/University | 32.8 #22 Highest
| 3,377
Highest 27%
|
8522-Edgewater
π©
5201 Sheridan Rd
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 32.7 #23 Highest
| 1,805
Lowest 42%
|
Accelerator/High Energy Physics
π©
5604 - 5620 S Ellis Ave
| Laboratory | 32.3 #24 Highest
| 1,901
Lowest 45%
|
Jewel Osco, 03470-Elston & Addison
π©
3570 N Elston Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 32.2 #25 Highest
| 1,771
Lowest 41%
|
6009 N BROADWAY
π©
6009 N BROADWAY
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 31.6 #27 Highest
| 1,788
Lowest 42%
|
8507-Jefferson Park (Elston)
π©
5353 N Elston Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 31.6 #27 Highest
| 1,995
Lowest 48%
|
8512-South Loop (16th & Clark)
π©
1615 S Clark St
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 31.4 #28 Highest
| 1,944
Lowest 46%
|
4700 N MARINE DR
π©
4700 N MARINE DR
| Medical Office | 31.1 #29 Highest
| 4,594
Highest 18%
|
Hinds Laboratory
π©
5734 S Ellis Ave
| Laboratory | 30.7 #30 Highest
| 4,038
Highest 21%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data