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) |
---|---|---|---|
Center on Halsted
3656 N Halsted St
| Mixed Use Property | 23.5
Highest 6%
| 2,432
Highest 40%
|
WGN Studios
2501 W BRADLEY PL
| Office | 23.4
Highest 6%
| 3,085
Highest 29%
|
3030 N BROADWAY
3030 N BROADWAY
| Enclosed Mall | 23.4
Highest 6%
| 3,085
Highest 29%
|
Swedish Covenant Hospital Campus
🚩
5145 N California Ave
| Mixed Use Property | 23.4
Highest 6%
| 18,719 #28 Highest
|
Lakeshore Sport & Fitness Lincoln Park
1320 W Fullerton Ave
| Fitness Center/Health Club/Gym | 23.3
Highest 6%
| 3,047
Highest 30%
|
6130 N SHERIDAN RD
6130 N SHERIDAN RD
| Other - Specialty Hospital | 23.2
Highest 6%
| 1,873
Lowest 44%
|
201 N State St
201 N State St
| Hotel | 22.9
Highest 6%
| 3,039
Highest 30%
|
Belmont and Central; A&G Fresh Market
5630 W Belmont Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 22.6
Highest 6%
| 1,220
Lowest 16%
|
303 E Chicago Ave
303 E Chicago Ave
| Laboratory | 22.6
Highest 6%
| 6,868
Highest 10%
|
216 W Jackson Blvd
216 W Jackson Blvd
| Office | 22.5
Highest 7%
| 4,103
Highest 20%
|
Ravenswood Station
1800 W LAWRENCE AVE
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 22.4
Highest 7%
| 3,344
Highest 27%
|
Flanner Hall
1068 W Sheridan Rd
| Mixed Use Property | 22.3
Highest 7%
| 1,438
Lowest 26%
|
RML Specialty Hospital
3534 W Van Buren
| Other - Specialty Hospital | 22.3
Highest 7%
| 4,237
Highest 20%
|
Fosco Park
1312 S Racine Ave
| Other - Recreation | 22.2
Highest 7%
| 1,344
Lowest 22%
|
Ford City Mall
🚩
7601 S Cicero Ave
| Enclosed Mall | 22.2
Highest 7%
| 19,161 #26 Highest
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data