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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 CO2 equivalent.

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 eq.)
Sofitel Chicago Water Tower
20 E Chestnut St
Hotel
12.4
Highest 19%
4,690
Highest 17%
IIT Tower
🏆 📷
(Illinois Tech)
10 W 35th Street
College/University
12.3
Highest 19%
4,843
Highest 16%
Lurie Children's Faculty Office Building
🏆
155 E Superior St
Office
12.3
Highest 19%
1,016
#17 Lowest
1111 N Clark St
1111 N Clark St
Automobile Dealership
12.3
Highest 19%
1,110
Lowest 8%
Harold Washington Library
400 S State St
Library
12.2
Highest 19%
9,208
Highest 7%
The Womens Treatment Center
140 N Ashland Ave
Residential Care Facility
12.2
Highest 19%
1,273
Lowest 18%
Little Village HS Campus -CPS
3120 S Kostner Ave
K-12 School
12.2
Highest 19%
3,534
Highest 25%
1165 N Clark St
1165 N Clark St
Office
12.1
Highest 19%
1,239
Lowest 16%
Damen/Hastings
1340 S Damen Ave
Office
12.1
Highest 19%
1,934
Lowest 46%
Walmart Supercenter #5617
4626 W Diversey Ave
Wholesale Club/Supercenter
12.1
Highest 19%
1,413
Lowest 25%
Villa at Windsor Park
2649 E 75th St
Senior Living Community
12.1
Highest 19%
1,181
Lowest 14%
180 N Wabash Ave
180 N Wabash Ave
Office
12.1
Highest 19%
1,955
Lowest 47%
Palmolive Building Condominium Association
913 - 921 N Michigan Ave
Multifamily Housing
12.1
Highest 19%
4,802
Highest 17%
820 W Jackson Blvd
820 W Jackson Blvd
Office
12.0
Highest 20%
2,095
Highest 48%
350 N LaSalle St
350 N LaSalle St
Office
12.0
Highest 20%
1,454
Lowest 27%

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