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.) |
---|---|---|---|
The Rookery Building
209 S LaSalle St
| Office | 8.9
Highest 37%
| 2,998
Highest 31%
|
1110 N Lake Shore Drive Apartments
1110 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 8.9
Highest 37%
| 1,848
Lowest 43%
|
8647 W Higgins Road
8647 W Higgins Road
| Office | 8.9
Highest 37%
| 1,329
Lowest 21%
|
Renee Granville-Grossman Residential Commons
(UChicago)
6031 S Ellis Ave
| Residence Hall/Dormitory | 8.9
Highest 37%
| 3,017
Highest 30%
|
400 East Ohio Condominium Association
400 E Ohio St
| Multifamily Housing | 8.9
Highest 37%
| 2,530
Highest 38%
|
Niche 905
905 N Orleans St
| Multifamily Housing | 8.9
Highest 37%
| 1,581
Lowest 33%
|
The Granville Condominum Association
1134 W Granville Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 8.9
Highest 37%
| 2,136
Highest 47%
|
122 Property LLC
122 S Michigan Ave
| Office | 8.9
Highest 37%
| 4,548
Highest 18%
|
Presidents Plaza 1
🏆
8600 W Bryn Mawr Ave
| Office | 8.8
Highest 37%
| 3,668
Highest 24%
|
280 S Columbus Dr
280 S Columbus Dr
| College/University | 8.8
Highest 37%
| 1,252
Lowest 17%
|
Halsted Flats
3740 N Halsted St
| Multifamily Housing | 8.8
Highest 37%
| 2,015
Lowest 49%
|
210 N Wells St
210 N Wells St
| Multifamily Housing | 8.8
Highest 37%
| 3,399
Highest 26%
|
Catalpa Gardens Condominium Association
1122 W Catalpa Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 8.8
Highest 37%
| 1,438
Lowest 26%
|
Atrium Village
303 W Division St
| Multifamily Housing | 8.8
Highest 37%
| 1,266
Lowest 18%
|
Symphony Center
220 S Michigan Ave
| Performing Arts | 8.8
Highest 37%
| 2,593
Highest 37%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data