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) |
---|---|---|---|
Chicago Transit Authority
567 W Lake St
| Office | 7.7
Lowest 50%
| 3,327
Highest 27%
|
1025 W Addison St
1025 W Addison St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7
Lowest 50%
| 2,001
Lowest 49%
|
Holy Name Cathedral Parish
735 N State St
| Other | 7.7
Lowest 50%
| 1,488
Lowest 29%
|
Wyndham Grand Chicago Riverfront
71 E Wacker Dr
| Hotel | 7.7
Lowest 50%
| 1,932
Lowest 46%
|
601 E 32ND ST
601 E 32ND ST
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7
Lowest 50%
| 1,461
Lowest 27%
|
Astor House
1340 N Astor St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7
Lowest 50%
| 1,583
Lowest 33%
|
McDonald's Headquarters
110 N Carpenter
| Office | 7.7
Lowest 50%
| 4,952
Highest 16%
|
Two River Place
720 N Larrabee St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7
Lowest 50%
| 2,000
Lowest 49%
|
The Patricians
401 411 W FULLERTON PKWY
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7
Lowest 50%
| 1,462
Lowest 27%
|
(IL278)-2000 N. Lincoln Park West
2000 - 2052 N Lincoln Park West
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7
Lowest 50%
| 2,029
Lowest 50%
|
Elm Street Plaza
1130 N Dearborn St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7
Lowest 50%
| 2,934
Highest 32%
|
Hollywood Towers Condo Association
5701 N Sheridan Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7
Lowest 50%
| 4,349
Highest 19%
|
135 S LaSalle Property LLC
🚩
135 S LaSalle St
| Office | 7.7
Lowest 50%
| 11,970
Highest 5%
|
191 N Wacker
191 N Wacker Dr
| Office | 7.6
Lowest 48%
| 5,903
Highest 12%
|
O'Hare Plaza II
8755 W HIGGINS RD
| Office | 7.6
Lowest 48%
| 1,942
Lowest 46%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data