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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)
Dwight Lofts LLC
642 S Clark St
Multifamily Housing
8.4
Highest 41%
1,656
Lowest 36%
990 North Lake Shore Drive
990 N Lake Shore Dr
Multifamily Housing
8.4
Highest 41%
2,502
Highest 38%
21 E CHESTNUT ST
🏆
21 E CHESTNUT ST
Multifamily Housing
8.4
Highest 41%
1,028
#30 Lowest
1035 W Van Buren St
1035 W Van Buren St
Multifamily Housing
8.4
Highest 41%
2,117
Highest 48%
Vision On State Condominium Association
1255 S State St
Multifamily Housing
8.4
Highest 41%
2,318
Highest 43%
Admiral's Pointe Condominium Association
645 N Kingsbury St
Multifamily Housing
8.4
Highest 41%
1,786
Lowest 42%
Ambassador House Condominium Association
1317 1325 N STATE PKWY
Multifamily Housing
8.3
Highest 42%
1,589
Lowest 34%
Kenect Chicago
505 N GREEN ST
Multifamily Housing
8.3
Highest 42%
1,523
Lowest 31%
Curie Metropolitan HS -CPS
4975 S Archer Ave
K-12 School
8.3
Highest 42%
3,464
Highest 25%
The Fordham Condominium Association
25 E Superior St
Multifamily Housing
8.3
Highest 42%
4,825
Highest 17%
21 W. Chestnut Condominium Association
21 W Chestnut St
Multifamily Housing
8.3
Highest 42%
1,412
Lowest 24%
2728 N HAMPDEN CT
2728 N HAMPDEN CT
Multifamily Housing
8.3
Highest 42%
1,160
Lowest 12%
Trump International Hotel & Tower Chicago
🚩
401 N Wabash Ave
Mixed Use Property
8.3
Highest 42%
17,566
#33 Highest
Hilton Chicago MM Suites
198 E Delaware Pl
Hotel
8.3
Highest 42%
2,625
Highest 36%
Intercontinental Hotel
505 N Michigan Ave
Hotel
8.3
Highest 42%
5,905
Highest 12%

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