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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.

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)
Aqua
🚩 📷
225 N Columbus Dr
Multifamily Housing
10.0
Highest 29%
12,896
Highest 4%
2500 N Lakeview Ave
2500 N Lakeview Ave
Multifamily Housing
9.9
Highest 29%
2,064
Lowest 50%
Home Depot, #1961 Elston/Leavitt
2542 Elston Ave
Retail Store
9.9
Highest 29%
1,184
Lowest 14%
4180 N MARINE DR
4180 N MARINE DR
Multifamily Housing
9.9
Highest 29%
1,078
Lowest 6%
Alice B. Sharp Building
37 S Wabash Ave
College/University
9.9
Highest 29%
2,257
Highest 45%
The Field Museum
🚩
1400 S Lake Shore Dr
Mixed Use Property
9.9
Highest 29%
12,647
Highest 4%
3110 Sheridan Condominiums
🏆
3110 N Sheridan Rd
Multifamily Housing
9.8
Highest 30%
1,175
Lowest 13%
Goldblatts Building
1609 W Chicago Ave
Office
9.8
Highest 30%
1,570
Lowest 33%
Fox Ford Lincoln Chicago
2501 N ELSTON AVE
Automobile Dealership
9.8
Highest 30%
1,429
Lowest 26%
Douglass, Frederick Academy HS -CPS
543 N Waller Ave
K-12 School
9.8
Highest 30%
1,320
Lowest 20%
Disney Magnet -CPS
4140 N Marine Dr
K-12 School
9.8
Highest 30%
2,543
Highest 38%
IL0032ZZ - Chicago Customhouse
610 S Canal St
Office
9.8
Highest 30%
2,750
Highest 34%
2111 W Roosevelt Rd
2111 W Roosevelt Rd
Office
9.8
Highest 30%
4,488
Highest 19%
Michigan Beach/Sandalwood
7251 S SOUTH SHORE DR
Multifamily Housing
9.8
Highest 30%
1,732
Lowest 39%
1000 Condominium Association
1000 N Lake Shore Plz
Multifamily Housing
9.8
Highest 30%
3,929
Highest 22%

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