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 “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) |
---|---|---|---|
161 North Clark
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161 N Clark
| Office | 9.1
Highest 35%
| 10,884
Highest 5%
|
Crerar Library
🏆
5730 S Ellis Ave
| Library | 9.1
Highest 35%
| 1,527
Lowest 31%
|
Target, Chicago Brickyard (1924)
6525 W Diversey Ave
| Retail Store | 9.1
Highest 35%
| 1,278
Lowest 18%
|
310 S PEORIA ST
310 S PEORIA ST
| Multifamily Housing | 9.1
Highest 35%
| 1,715
Lowest 39%
|
Raby HS -CPS
3545 W Fulton St
| K-12 School | 9.1
Highest 35%
| 1,416
Lowest 25%
|
180 North Jefferson Apartments
180 N Jefferson St
| Multifamily Housing | 9.1
Highest 35%
| 2,084
Highest 49%
|
111 W WACKER DR
111 W WACKER DR
| Multifamily Housing | 9.1
Highest 35%
| 4,175
Highest 20%
|
International Tower
8550 W Bryn Mawr Ave
| Office | 9.1
Highest 35%
| 2,822
Highest 33%
|
Kinzie Park Tower Condominium Association
501 N Clinton St
| Multifamily Housing | 9.1
Highest 35%
| 2,660
Highest 35%
|
Second Prairie Shores, LLC
2951 S King Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 9.1
Highest 35%
| 2,632
Highest 36%
|
Target, Chicago Mid North (1437)
2939 W Addison St
| Retail Store | 9.0
Highest 36%
| 1,716
Lowest 39%
|
Southland Preservation
6253 S MICHIGAN AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 9.0
Highest 36%
| 1,711
Lowest 38%
|
150 N Wacker Dr
150 N Wacker Dr
| Office | 9.0
Highest 36%
| 2,379
Highest 41%
|
Lake Terrace Condominiums
7337 S SOUTH SHORE DR
| Multifamily Housing | 9.0
Highest 36%
| 2,455
Highest 39%
|
860 N Lake Shore Drive Trust
860 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 9.0
Highest 36%
| 3,087
Highest 29%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data