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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)
300 North Elizabeth
300 N Elizabeth St
Office
19.6
Highest 9%
2,504
Highest 38%
Omni Hotel
676 N Michigan Ave
Hotel
19.5
Highest 9%
8,600
Highest 8%
Symphony of Bronzeville
3400 3428 S INDIANA AVE
Senior Living Community
19.4
Highest 9%
1,416
Lowest 25%
Kindred Hospital Chicago North
2544 W Montrose Ave
Other - Specialty Hospital
19.1
Highest 10%
2,837
Highest 33%
Incubator Building
55 W 34th Street
College/University
19.0
Highest 10%
1,373
Lowest 23%
Garfield Park Behavioral Hospital
🏆
520 N Ridgeway Ave
Other - Specialty Hospital
19.0
Highest 10%
1,016
#17 Lowest
Stanley Manne Children's Research Institute
2430 N Halsted St
Laboratory
18.9
Highest 10%
2,315
Highest 43%
#1107 Chicago South Loop
1430 S Ashland Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
18.9
Highest 10%
2,960
Highest 31%
2535 S Dr Martin Luther King Jr Dr
2535 S Dr Martin Luther King Jr Dr
Medical Office
18.8
Highest 10%
1,038
Lowest 3%
Kent Chemical Laboratory
🏆
1020 - 1024 E 58th St
Laboratory
18.8
Highest 10%
1,123
Lowest 9%
Holy Cross Hospial
🚩
2701 W 68th St
Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)
18.8
Highest 10%
7,708
Highest 9%
Presence St Joseph Hospital - Chicago
🚩
2900 N Lake Shore Dr
Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)
18.5
Highest 10%
12,603
Highest 4%
Ratner Athletics Center
5530 S Ellis Ave
Fitness Center/Health Club/Gym
18.4
Highest 10%
3,109
Highest 29%
Chicago-Central
4058 W Melrose St
Other - Specialty Hospital
18.4
Highest 10%
2,191
Highest 46%
Mansueto Library
🏆
1100 E 57th St
Library
18.1
Highest 10%
1,161
Lowest 12%

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