Electrify Chicago

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.

2017 GHG Emissions -
31M metric tons CO2 equivalent
69% buildings
24% transportation
7% waste

Chicago 2022 CAP

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. 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.

Chicago 2022 CAP

Property Name / address	Primary Property Type	Greenhouse Gas Intensity (kg CO₂/sqft)	Total Greenhouse Emissions (metric tons CO₂)
Parc Chestnut Condominium Association 849 N Franklin St	Multifamily Housing	7.5 Lowest 46%	2,838 Highest 33%
162 North State Street 162 N State St	Residence Hall/Dormitory	7.5 Lowest 46%	2,373 Highest 42%
Senn Achievement Academy -CPS 5900 N Glenwood Ave	K-12 School	7.5 Lowest 46%	2,179 Highest 46%
Americana Towers Condominium 1636 N Wells St	Multifamily Housing	7.5 Lowest 46%	2,651 Highest 35%
200 E. Delaware Condominium Association 200 E Delaware Pl	Multifamily Housing	7.5 Lowest 46%	2,557 Highest 37%
Third Prairie Shores, LLC 3001 S King Dr	Multifamily Housing	7.5 Lowest 46%	2,161 Highest 47%
Clark-Adams 105 W Adams St	Office	7.5 Lowest 46%	3,664 Highest 24%
Renaissance Chicago Downtown 1 W Wacker Dr	Hotel	7.5 Lowest 46%	4,017 Highest 21%
233 N Michigan Ave 233 N Michigan Ave	Office	7.5 Lowest 46%	8,698 Highest 8%
CNA Building 🚩 333 S Wabash Ave	Office	7.5 Lowest 46%	10,566 Highest 6%
200 W Madison 200 W Madison	Office	7.4 Lowest 45%	7,400 Highest 9%
120 North LaSalle 120 N LaSalle St	Office	7.4 Lowest 45%	3,401 Highest 26%
20 W Kinzie St 20 W Kinzie St	Office	7.4 Lowest 45%	2,918 Highest 32%
1155 E 60th St 1155 E 60th St	College/University	7.4 Lowest 45%	1,375 Lowest 23%
The Franklin 🚩 227 W Monroe	Office	7.4 Lowest 45%	22,015 #16 Highest

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data