Electrify Chicago

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.

2017 GHG Emissions -
31M metric tons CO2 equivalent
69% buildings
24% transportation
7% waste

Chicago 2022 CAP

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. 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.

Chicago 2022 CAP

Property Name / address	Primary Property Type	Greenhouse Gas Intensity (kg CO₂/sqft)	Total Greenhouse Emissions (metric tons CO₂)
SoNo East 840 W Blackhawk St	Multifamily Housing	5.2 Lowest 10%	1,666 Lowest 36%
Chestnut Tower 121 W Chestnut St	Multifamily Housing	5.2 Lowest 10%	1,222 Lowest 16%
Hirsch Metropolitan HS -CPS 7740 S Ingleside Ave	K-12 School	5.2 Lowest 10%	1,134 Lowest 10%
St. Rita of Cascia HS 7740 S Western Ave	K-12 School	5.2 Lowest 10%	1,420 Lowest 25%
Lake View HS -CPS 4015 N Ashland Ave	K-12 School	5.2 Lowest 10%	1,376 Lowest 23%
120 S Riverside Plaza 120 S Riverside Plz	Office	5.2 Lowest 10%	4,075 Highest 21%
3900 Lake Shore Drive Condominium Association 3900 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	5.2 Lowest 10%	1,355 Lowest 22%
Kennelly Square Condominium Association 1749 N Wells St	Multifamily Housing	5.2 Lowest 10%	1,685 Lowest 37%
1700 East 56th Street 1700 E 56th St	Multifamily Housing	5.2 Lowest 10%	2,489 Highest 39%
ParkView at River East Condominium Association 505 N McClurg Ct	Multifamily Housing	5.2 Lowest 10%	3,421 Highest 26%
One Bennet Park Apartments 451 E Grand Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.2 Lowest 10%	4,058 Highest 21%
Tiara Homeowners Association 6145 6147 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	5.1 Lowest 9%	1,094 Lowest 7%
The Gwen 521 N Rush St	Hotel	5.1 Lowest 9%	1,820 Lowest 43%
Transportation Building Condominium Association 600 S Dearborn St	Multifamily Housing	5.1 Lowest 9%	2,265 Highest 44%
311 W Illinois St 311 W Illinois St	Multifamily Housing	5.1 Lowest 9%	1,493 Lowest 29%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data