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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)
Mundelein Center
1020 W Sheridan Rd
College/University
8.1
Highest 44%
1,670
Lowest 36%
The Heritage at Millennium Park
130 N Garland Ct
Multifamily Housing
8.1
Highest 44%
7,533
Highest 9%
Sherway Tower
4225 N SHERIDAN RD
Multifamily Housing
8.1
Highest 44%
1,280
Lowest 19%
6 N Michigan Ave
6 N Michigan Ave
Multifamily Housing
8.1
Highest 44%
1,860
Lowest 44%
40 E Oak St
40 E Oak St
Multifamily Housing
8.1
Highest 44%
1,243
Lowest 17%
(IL337)- Museum Park Place
1841 S Calumet Ave
Multifamily Housing
8.1
Highest 44%
2,439
Highest 40%
Museum Park Tower 1 Condominium Association
1322 S Prairie Ave
Multifamily Housing
8.1
Highest 44%
2,272
Highest 44%
345 Fullerton Parkway Condominium Association
345 W Fullerton Pkwy
Multifamily Housing
8.1
Highest 44%
2,360
Highest 42%
Two East Oak Condominium Association
2 E Oak St
Multifamily Housing
8.1
Highest 44%
2,066
Lowest 50%
Fourth Prairie Shores, LLC
2851 S King Dr
Multifamily Housing
8.1
Highest 44%
2,344
Highest 42%
230 W Monroe
230 W Monroe
Office
8.1
Highest 44%
5,477
Highest 14%
Wright College
4300 N Narragansett
College/University
8.1
Highest 44%
4,384
Highest 19%
208 S La Salle Whole Building
208 S LaSalle St
Hotel
8.1
Highest 44%
7,325
Highest 9%
Lake Grove Village Bldg 1
3500 S LAKE PARK AVE
Multifamily Housing
8.1
Highest 44%
3,751
Highest 23%
Chicago Board of Trade Building
🚩
141 W Jackson Blvd
Office
8.0
Highest 46%
12,507
Highest 4%

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