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 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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Ace Hotel Chicago
311 N MORGAN ST
| Hotel | 12.0
Highest 20%
| 1,541
Lowest 31%
|
BAI Century, LLC
2828 N Clark St
| Enclosed Mall | 12.0
Highest 20%
| 2,089
Highest 49%
|
James R Thompson Center
🚩
100 W Randolph St
| Office | 12.0
Highest 20%
| 14,265 #44 Highest
|
NBC Tower
🚩
455 N Cityfront Plaza Dr
| Office | 11.9
Highest 20%
| 11,205
Highest 5%
|
830 N Michigan Ave
830 N Michigan Ave
| Enclosed Mall | 11.9
Highest 20%
| 1,505
Lowest 30%
|
West Side Realty Corporation
1645 W Jackson Blvd
| Medical Office | 11.9
Highest 20%
| 1,519
Lowest 31%
|
909 W WASHINGTON BLVD
909 W WASHINGTON BLVD
| Multifamily Housing | 11.9
Highest 20%
| 1,088
Lowest 6%
|
Simeon Career Academy HS -CPS
8235 S Vincennes Ave
| K-12 School | 11.9
Highest 20%
| 2,511
Highest 38%
|
Point at Clark
3131 N Clark St
| Strip Mall | 11.8
Highest 21%
| 1,126
Lowest 9%
|
3601 3613 S WELLS ST
3601 3613 S WELLS ST
| Multifamily Housing | 11.8
Highest 21%
| 1,033
Lowest 3%
|
Fannie Emanuel
3916 W Washington
| Multifamily Housing | 11.8
Highest 21%
| 1,118
Lowest 9%
|
Hope College Prepa HS -CPS
5515 South Lowe Ave
| K-12 School | 11.8
Highest 21%
| 1,889
Lowest 44%
|
3101-3121 N Sheridan Rd
3101-3121 N Sheridan Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 11.8
Highest 21%
| 2,431
Highest 40%
|
Charles M. Harper Cetner (Booth School)
🏆
5807 S Woodlawn Ave
| College/University | 11.7
Highest 21%
| 4,903
Highest 16%
|
Centennial Hall
(DePaul)
2345 N Sheffield Ave
| College/University | 11.7
Highest 21%
| 1,034
Lowest 3%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data