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) |
---|---|---|---|
8527-Ukrainian Village
🚩
2021 W Chicago Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 27.3 #46 Highest
| 1,502
Lowest 29%
|
Jewel Osco, 03224-Irving Park & Narraganset
🚩
6430 W Irving Park Rd
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 27.2 #48 Highest
| 1,566
Lowest 33%
|
303 E Superior Street
🚩
303 E Superior Street
| Laboratory | 27.2 #48 Highest
| 11,381
Highest 5%
|
70800552 -- Chicago
🚩
7030 S Ashland Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 27.0 #49 Highest
| 1,712
Lowest 38%
|
Jewel Osco, 03349-Narragansett & Diversey
2520 N Narragansett Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 26.9
Highest 4%
| 1,728
Lowest 39%
|
Jewel Osco, 02502-Clybourn & Wrightwood
2550 N Clybourn St
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 26.9
Highest 4%
| 2,293
Highest 43%
|
5841 S. Maryland Ave MC0985
🚨
5841 S. Maryland Ave MC0985
| Hospital (General Medical & Surgical) | 26.9
Highest 4%
| 146,536 #2 Highest
|
Lurie Children's Lincoln Park Outpatient Center - Deming
467 W Deming Pl
| Mixed Use Property | 26.9
Highest 4%
| 1,692
Lowest 38%
|
Market Place at Six Corners 10361
4612 - 4730 W Irving Park Rd
| Other - Mall | 26.8
Highest 4%
| 2,090
Highest 49%
|
Rush University Medical Center
🚨
1653 W Congress Pkwy
| Hospital (General Medical & Surgical) | 26.4
Highest 4%
| 102,661 #3 Highest
|
70800789 -- 47th ~ Damen
4620 S Damen Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 26.2
Highest 4%
| 1,999
Lowest 48%
|
Gateway to West Loop
16 - 40 S Halsted St
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 26.1
Highest 4%
| 2,500
Highest 38%
|
8516-Bucktown
2112 N ASHLAND AVE
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 26.1
Highest 4%
| 2,092
Highest 49%
|
CME Group Inc
333 S LaSalle St
| Financial Office | 26.0
Highest 4%
| 6,781
Highest 10%
|
300 E Superior Street
300 E Superior Street
| Laboratory | 26.0
Highest 4%
| 7,911
Highest 8%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data