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Electrify Chicago

According to the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan(opens in a new tab), 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.

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(opens in a new tab). 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)
Club Quarters
75 E Wacker Dr
Hotel
6.3
Lowest 25%
1,122
Lowest 9%
Eric Solorio HS -CPS
5410 S St Louis Ave
K-12 School
6.3
Lowest 25%
1,337
Lowest 21%
Apostolic Church of God
6340 S Dorchester Ave
Worship Facility
6.3
Lowest 25%
1,351
Lowest 22%
20 E CEDAR ST
20 E CEDAR ST
Multifamily Housing
6.3
Lowest 25%
1,071
Lowest 5%
3001 S MICHIGAN AVE
3001 S MICHIGAN AVE
Multifamily Housing
6.3
Lowest 25%
1,204
Lowest 15%
Midwest Apartments
6 N Hamlin Blvd
Multifamily Housing
6.3
Lowest 25%
1,464
Lowest 28%
Twin Towers Apartments
1649 E 50th Pl
Multifamily Housing
6.3
Lowest 25%
1,372
Lowest 23%
Wicker Park Apts
1414 N Damen Ave
Multifamily Housing
6.3
Lowest 25%
1,196
Lowest 15%
O'Hare Plaza I
8725- 8745 W Higgins Rd
Office
6.3
Lowest 25%
3,413
Highest 26%
1K Fulton
1000 W Fulton St
Office
6.3
Lowest 25%
3,561
Highest 25%
Crane Achievement Academy -CPS
2245 W Jackson Blvd
K-12 School
6.3
Lowest 25%
2,633
Highest 36%
Hubbard Place Apartments
360 W Hubbard St
Multifamily Housing
6.3
Lowest 25%
3,159
Highest 29%
400 North LaSalle Condominium Association
400 N LaSalle St
Multifamily Housing
6.3
Lowest 25%
3,455
Highest 25%
Shoreline Park Condominium Association
4950 N Marine Dr
Multifamily Housing
6.3
Lowest 25%
2,436
Highest 40%
Schurz HS -CPS
3601 N Milwaukee Ave
K-12 School
6.3
Lowest 25%
2,866
Highest 32%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data (opens in a new tab)