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) |
---|---|---|---|
George W Dunne Cook County Office Building
69 W Washington St
| Office | 6.8
Lowest 34%
| 5,549
Highest 13%
|
Harbor House Condominium Association
3200 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8
Lowest 34%
| 2,909
Highest 32%
|
Congress Center
525 W Van Buren
| Office | 6.7
Lowest 33%
| 3,534
Highest 25%
|
8750 West Bryn Mawr Ave - Triangle Plaza
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8750 W Bryn Mawr Ave
| Office | 6.7
Lowest 33%
| 5,147
Highest 15%
|
151 N Franklin St
151 N Franklin St
| Office | 6.7
Lowest 33%
| 6,358
Highest 11%
|
Mallers Building LLC
5 S Wabash Ave
| Enclosed Mall | 6.7
Lowest 33%
| 2,123
Highest 47%
|
Association House of Chicago
1116 N Kedzie Ave
| Office | 6.7
Lowest 33%
| 1,028
Lowest 2%
|
250 S Wacker Dr
250 S Wacker Dr
| Office | 6.7
Lowest 33%
| 1,687
Lowest 37%
|
Flair Tower
222 W Erie St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.7
Lowest 33%
| 1,718
Lowest 39%
|
River West Lofts
925 W HURON ST
| Multifamily Housing | 6.7
Lowest 33%
| 1,192
Lowest 14%
|
Jefferson Tower CA
200 N Jefferson St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.7
Lowest 33%
| 1,527
Lowest 31%
|
Grandville Tower Condominiums
6166 N SHERIDAN RD
| Multifamily Housing | 6.7
Lowest 33%
| 1,308
Lowest 20%
|
1000 South Clark
1000 S CLARK ST
| Multifamily Housing | 6.7
Lowest 33%
| 2,985
Highest 31%
|
1400 South Michigan
1400 S Michigan Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 6.7
Lowest 33%
| 2,290
Highest 43%
|
Maple Pointe Apartments
150 W Maple St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.7
Lowest 33%
| 1,882
Lowest 44%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data