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.) |
---|---|---|---|
North Lawndale College Prep Charter, Collins - CPS
1313 S Sacramento Blvd
| K-12 School | 11.7
Highest 21%
| 2,409
Highest 40%
|
6125 S KENWOOD AVE
6125 S KENWOOD AVE
| Senior Living Community | 11.7
Highest 21%
| 1,504
Lowest 30%
|
860 N DEWITT PL
860 N DEWITT PL
| Multifamily Housing | 11.7
Highest 21%
| 1,455
Lowest 27%
|
Burnham Pointe
730 South Clark Street
| Multifamily Housing | 11.7
Highest 21%
| 5,006
Highest 16%
|
Harper Court
5235 S Harper Ct
| Office | 11.6
Highest 21%
| 2,686
Highest 35%
|
Student Center
(DePaul)
2250 N Sheffield Ave
| College/University | 11.6
Highest 21%
| 1,736
Lowest 40%
|
Garland Building
111 N Wabash Ave
| Office | 11.6
Highest 21%
| 3,016
Highest 30%
|
29 E. Madison LLC
29 E Madison St
| Office | 11.6
Highest 21%
| 2,795
Highest 33%
|
401 S Clinton St
401 S Clinton St
| Office | 11.5
Highest 22%
| 1,878
Lowest 44%
|
The Woodlands of Bronzeville Condominium Association
619 645 E WOODLAND PARK
| Multifamily Housing | 11.5
Highest 22%
| 1,174
Lowest 13%
|
223 Jackson Brooks Building LLC
223 W Jackson Blvd
| Office | 11.5
Highest 22%
| 1,927
Lowest 46%
|
Chicago Transit Authority - 120 N. Racine
120 N Racine Ave
| Office | 11.5
Highest 22%
| 1,443
Lowest 26%
|
Lake Shore Tower Apartments
5600 N SHERIDAN RD
| Multifamily Housing | 11.5
Highest 22%
| 1,150
Lowest 11%
|
60 E 36TH PL
60 E 36TH PL
| Multifamily Housing | 11.4
Highest 22%
| 1,065
Lowest 5%
|
The Thompson Building
350 N Clark St
| Office | 11.4
Highest 22%
| 1,264
Lowest 18%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data