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)
Austin Polytechical HS -CPS 231 N Pine Ave	K-12 School	4.5 Lowest 4%	1,771 Lowest 41%
Homewood Suites by Hampton Inn 118 N JEFFERSON ST	Hotel	4.4 Lowest 4%	1,472 Lowest 28%
Rudolph, Wilma Elementary Learning Center/ Hope Institute -CPS 1628 W Washington Blvd	K-12 School	4.4 Lowest 4%	1,156 Lowest 11%
No. 10 Urban Court Lofts 1040 W Adams St	Multifamily Housing	4.4 Lowest 4%	1,713 Lowest 38%
Roosevelt HS, Theodore -CPS 3436 W Wilson Ave	K-12 School	4.4 Lowest 4%	1,418 Lowest 25%
Museum of Science and Industry 5700 S Lake Shore Dr	Museum	4.4 Lowest 4%	5,372 Highest 14%
Carl Sandburg Village Condo Association #2 1455 - 1460 N Sandburg Ter	Multifamily Housing	4.4 Lowest 4%	3,417 Highest 26%
The Pavilion 5441 N East River Rd	Multifamily Housing	4.4 Lowest 4%	4,699 Highest 17%
TransUnion LLC 555 W Adams St	Office	4.3 Lowest 3%	1,354 Lowest 22%
131 S Dearborn 3 131 S Dearborn	Financial Office	4.3 Lowest 3%	1,170 Lowest 12%
311 W Monroe 311 W Monroe	Office	4.3 Lowest 3%	1,845 Lowest 43%
15th Place 811 - 833 W 15th Pl	Multifamily Housing	4.3 Lowest 3%	1,094 Lowest 7%
Lake Shore Condominium Association 1440 N LAKESHORE DR	Multifamily Housing	4.3 Lowest 3%	1,325 Lowest 20%
(IL296) - 1400 Museum Park Condo 100 E 14th St	Multifamily Housing	4.3 Lowest 3%	2,343 Highest 42%
The Blackstone, A Renaissance Hotel 636 S Michigan Ave	Hotel	4.3 Lowest 3%	1,665 Lowest 36%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data