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) |
---|---|---|---|
200 N LaSalle Ave
200 N LaSalle Ave
| Office | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 5,043
Highest 16%
|
125 South Wacker
125 S Wacker Dr
| Office | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 4,595
Highest 18%
|
Prajakta Meharunkar
1515 W Webster Avenue
| Office | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 1,556
Lowest 32%
|
345-355 N Canal St
345-355 N Canal St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 1,264
Lowest 17%
|
300 North LaSalle
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300 N LaSalle St
| Office | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 10,862
Highest 5%
|
1301 N STATE PKWY
1301 N STATE PKWY
| Hotel | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 1,354
Lowest 22%
|
Gray Hotel - Kimpton Hotel
39 S LaSalle St
| Hotel | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 1,728
Lowest 39%
|
Jones College Prep, William - CPS
600 S State St
| K-12 School | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 1,741
Lowest 40%
|
LaSalle Terrace Condominium Association
1540 N LaSalle St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 1,093
Lowest 7%
|
One East 15th Place
1529 S STATE ST
| Multifamily Housing | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 1,348
Lowest 22%
|
Hilliard Homes Phase II Limited Partnership
2030 S State St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 1,250
Lowest 17%
|
221 E 121ST PL
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221 E 121ST PL
| Multifamily Housing | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 1,111
Lowest 8%
|
R&D 659 CA
659 W Randolph St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 2,201
Highest 46%
|
1464 S Michigan Ave
1464 S Michigan Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 1,911
Lowest 45%
|
Caroline Hedger Apartment
6400 N Sherdian Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 1,843
Lowest 43%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data