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) |
---|---|---|---|
1616 E 56Th St
1616 E 56Th St
| Multifamily Housing | 4.9
Lowest 7%
| 1,635
Lowest 35%
|
PAC Lofts
🏆
1735 N Paulina
| Multifamily Housing | 4.9
Lowest 7%
| 1,016
#19 Lowest
|
Morgan Park HS -CPS
1744 W Pryor Ave
| K-12 School | 4.9
Lowest 7%
| 1,328
Lowest 21%
|
Dunbar Vocational Acad HS -CPS
3000 S King Dr
| K-12 School | 4.9
Lowest 7%
| 1,569
Lowest 33%
|
DuSable Campus -CPS
4934 S Wabash Ave
| K-12 School | 4.9
Lowest 7%
| 2,028
Lowest 49%
|
The Gage Commericial Condominium Building
🏆
18 28 S Michigan Ave
| College/University | 4.8
Lowest 6%
| 1,007
#5 Lowest
|
University Village Lofts
1524 S Sangamon St
| Multifamily Housing | 4.8
Lowest 6%
| 1,219
Lowest 16%
|
3260 N LAKE SHORE DR
3260 N LAKE SHORE DR
| Multifamily Housing | 4.8
Lowest 6%
| 1,232
Lowest 16%
|
Fenger Achievement Academy -CPS
11220 S Wallace St
| K-12 School | 4.8
Lowest 6%
| 1,637
Lowest 35%
|
530 North Lake Shore Drive
530 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 4.8
Lowest 6%
| 2,457
Highest 39%
|
Glen Lake 1 Condo Assoc.
6400 W Berteau
| Multifamily Housing | 4.8
Lowest 6%
| 2,084
Highest 49%
|
Truman College
1145 W Wilson Ave
| College/University | 4.8
Lowest 6%
| 4,592
Highest 18%
|
K2 Apartments
365 N Halsted St
| Multifamily Housing | 4.8
Lowest 6%
| 3,410
Highest 26%
|
Hawthorne House Apartments
3450 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 4.8
Lowest 6%
| 2,566
Highest 37%
|
111 S PEORIA ST
111 S PEORIA ST
| Multifamily Housing | 4.7
Lowest 5%
| 1,056
Lowest 4%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data