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.) |
---|---|---|---|
4747 S DR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR DR
4747 S DR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR DR
| Multifamily Housing | 10.2
Highest 28%
| 2,505
Highest 38%
|
Cook County Building
118 N Clark St
| Office | 10.2
Highest 28%
| 6,532
Highest 11%
|
River East Center Campus
🚩
322 E Illinois St
| Mixed Use Property | 10.2
Highest 28%
| 15,479 #38 Highest
|
The Maxwell
1100 S Canal St
| Strip Mall | 10.1
Highest 28%
| 2,437
Highest 40%
|
Delaware Place Private Residences
875 N DEARBORN ST
| Multifamily Housing | 10.1
Highest 28%
| 1,505
Lowest 30%
|
Piper's Alley
230 W North Ave
| Mixed Use Property | 10.1
Highest 28%
| 2,223
Highest 46%
|
The Edge Lofts & Tower Condominium Association
210 S Des Plaines St
| Multifamily Housing | 10.1
Highest 28%
| 2,392
Highest 41%
|
Quadrangle House
6700 S Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 10.1
Highest 28%
| 2,237
Highest 45%
|
Dearborn Homes
🚩
2960 S Federal St
| Multifamily Housing | 10.1
Highest 28%
| 7,159
Highest 9%
|
737 North Michigan Avenue Investors LLC
🚩
737 N Michigan Ave
| Mixed Use Property | 10.0
Highest 29%
| 10,567
Highest 6%
|
CW GLL 444 N Michigan
🏆
444 N Michigan Ave
| Office | 10.0
Highest 29%
| 5,190
Highest 14%
|
Target, Chicago West Loop (2781)
1101 W Jackson Blvd
| Retail Store | 10.0
Highest 29%
| 1,685
Lowest 37%
|
O.P.LLC/Orleans Plaza
351 W Hubbard St
| Office | 10.0
Highest 29%
| 1,904
Lowest 45%
|
Corboy Law Center
25 E Pearson St
| College/University | 10.0
Highest 29%
| 3,069
Highest 30%
|
Bouchet Elementary Acad -CPS
🏆
7355 S Jeffrey Blvd
| K-12 School | 10.0
Highest 29%
| 1,011
#11 Lowest
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data