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) |
---|---|---|---|
Lincoln Park Plaza
600 W Diversey Pkwy
| Multifamily Housing | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 1,939
Lowest 46%
|
Sullivan HS, Roger C -CPS
6631 N Bosworth Ave
| K-12 School | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 1,564
Lowest 32%
|
One Museum Park West
1201 S Prairie Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 4,678
Highest 17%
|
900/910 Lake Shore Drive
900 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 4,489
Highest 19%
|
The 3600 Condominium Association
3600 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 7.2
Lowest 42%
| 5,618
Highest 13%
|
77 West Wacker Drive
77 W Wacker Dr
| Office | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 8,106
Highest 8%
|
IIT-Stuart School of Business
🏆
(Illinois Tech)
565 W Adams St
| College/University | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 2,021
Lowest 49%
|
DePaul Center
(DePaul)
1 E Jackson Blvd
| College/University | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 4,992
Highest 16%
|
1 E SCHILLER ST
1 E SCHILLER ST
| Multifamily Housing | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 1,145
Lowest 10%
|
10/30 South Wacker
🚩
10 S Wacker Dr
| Office | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 20,376 #23 Highest
|
731 S Plymouth Ct
731 S Plymouth Ct
| Multifamily Housing | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 1,076
Lowest 5%
|
River North Park
320 W Illinois St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 3,278
Highest 27%
|
901 South Plymouth Condominium Association
901 S Plymouth Ct
| Multifamily Housing | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 1,155
Lowest 11%
|
50 East Bellevue Condo Association
50 E Bellevue Pl
| Multifamily Housing | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 1,706
Lowest 38%
|
Crowne Plaza Chicago Metro
733 W Madison St
| Hotel | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 1,425
Lowest 25%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data