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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.)
Allegro Hotel and Palace Theater
151 171 W Randolph St
Hotel
9.8
Highest 30%
3,739
Highest 23%
AMA Plaza
🚩
330 N Wabash Av
Office
9.8
Highest 30%
18,347
#30 Highest
The John Hancock Center
🚩 📷
875 N Michigan Ave
Mixed Use Property
9.7
Highest 31%
22,228
#14 Highest
300 S DAMEN AVE
300 S DAMEN AVE
Multifamily Housing
9.7
Highest 31%
1,664
Lowest 36%
S2-Sinai; Schwab Rehab Institute
1401 S California Ave
Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)
9.7
Highest 31%
1,722
Lowest 39%
Cobbler Square Lofts
1350 N Wells St
Multifamily Housing
9.7
Highest 31%
1,373
Lowest 23%
Home Depot
🏆
200 W 87th St
Retail Store
9.7
Highest 31%
1,009
#9 Lowest
MDA City Apartments
63 E Lake St
Multifamily Housing
9.7
Highest 31%
1,704
Lowest 38%
Montgomery on Superior Condominium Association
500 W Superior St
Multifamily Housing
9.7
Highest 31%
3,922
Highest 22%
900 North Michigan
🚩
900 North Michigan
Mixed Use Property
9.7
Highest 31%
20,806
#21 Highest
Graham School of Management, St. Xavier University
3700 W 103rd St
College/University
9.7
Highest 31%
4,544
Highest 18%
Eugenie Terrace
🚩
1730 N Clark St
Multifamily Housing
9.7
Highest 31%
6,048
Highest 12%
8501 W Higgins Rd
8501 W Higgins Rd
Office
9.6
Highest 32%
1,588
Lowest 34%
820 S Michigan Ave
🏆
820 S Michigan Ave
Multifamily Housing
9.6
Highest 32%
1,079
Lowest 6%
190 S LaSalle St
190 S LaSalle St
Office
9.6
Highest 32%
8,454
Highest 8%

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