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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Edith Spurlock Sampson Apts
2720 N Sheffield Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 11.4
Highest 22%
| 1,784
Lowest 42%
|
Bryn Mawr
5550 N Kenmore Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 11.4
Highest 22%
| 1,775
Lowest 41%
|
500 N Michigan
500 N Michigan Ave
| Office | 11.3
Highest 22%
| 4,402
Highest 19%
|
Madison 123 Assoc LLC
🏆
119 - 123 Madison St
| Office | 11.3
Highest 22%
| 1,020
#24 Lowest
|
Aviation Administration Building
10510 W Zemke Rd
| Office | 11.3
Highest 22%
| 1,875
Lowest 44%
|
Gateway Chandler
2555 N Clark St
| Multifamily Housing | 11.3
Highest 22%
| 1,704
Lowest 38%
|
Dana Hotel & Spa
660 N State St
| Hotel | 11.2
Highest 23%
| 1,330
Lowest 21%
|
Courtyard Marriot
30 E Hubbard St
| Hotel | 11.2
Highest 23%
| 2,268
Highest 44%
|
200 West Partners Limited Partnership
330 S Wells St
| Multifamily Housing | 11.2
Highest 23%
| 1,092
Lowest 7%
|
Johnson Center for Science and Community Life
5141 N Christiana Ave
| College/University | 11.2
Highest 23%
| 1,132
Lowest 9%
|
645 N Michigan Ave
645 N Michigan Ave
| Office | 11.2
Highest 23%
| 2,409
Highest 40%
|
Prosser Career Acad HS -CPS
2148 N Long Ave
| K-12 School | 11.2
Highest 23%
| 2,346
Highest 42%
|
The Hoxton
200 N Green St
| Hotel | 11.2
Highest 23%
| 1,708
Lowest 38%
|
Park Newberry Condominiums
55 W Delaware Pl
| Multifamily Housing | 11.2
Highest 23%
| 2,917
Highest 32%
|
939 North Avenue Collection,LLC
913 949 W North Ave
| Mixed Use Property | 11.1
Highest 24%
| 2,440
Highest 40%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data