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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)
175 W Jackson
175 W Jackson
Office
5.9
Lowest 18%
10,690
Highest 6%
James Kilmer Condo Association
1560 N Sandburg Ter
Multifamily Housing
5.9
Lowest 18%
4,405
Highest 19%
(IL526)-Carl Sandburg Village
1355 N Sandburg Ter
Multifamily Housing
5.9
Lowest 18%
4,249
Highest 20%
The 400 Condominium Association
400 E Randolph St
Multifamily Housing
5.9
Lowest 18%
6,600
Highest 11%
222 N LaSalle St
222 N LaSalle St
Office
5.8
Lowest 16%
7,027
Highest 10%
Malibu Condominium
6007 N Sheridan Rd
Multifamily Housing
5.8
Lowest 16%
2,954
Highest 31%
5901 N SHERIDAN RD
5901 N SHERIDAN RD
Multifamily Housing
5.8
Lowest 16%
1,412
Lowest 24%
AMLI Lofts Polk
111 W Polk St
Multifamily Housing
5.8
Lowest 16%
1,176
Lowest 13%
EMME
165 N Desplaines St
Multifamily Housing
5.8
Lowest 16%
1,142
Lowest 10%
LaSalle Private Residences
1212 N LaSalle St
Multifamily Housing
5.8
Lowest 16%
2,149
Highest 47%
Lewis Towers
820 N Michigan Ave
Office
5.8
Lowest 16%
1,262
Lowest 17%
EnV Chicago
161 W Kinzie St
Multifamily Housing
5.8
Lowest 16%
2,285
Highest 44%
1301 N DEARBORN ST
1301 N DEARBORN ST
Multifamily Housing
5.8
Lowest 16%
1,336
Lowest 21%
Michael A. Bilandic Building
160 N LaSalle St
Office
5.8
Lowest 16%
2,705
Highest 35%
1001 South State
1001 S STATE ST
Multifamily Housing
5.8
Lowest 16%
2,958
Highest 31%

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