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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.)
One North Wacker
🚩
1 N Wacker Dr
Office
7.9
Highest 47%
12,683
Highest 4%
225 W Washington
225 W Washington St
Office
7.9
Highest 47%
4,186
Highest 20%
Eight O Five
805 N LA SALLE DR
Multifamily Housing
7.9
Highest 47%
2,122
Highest 47%
10 S LaSalle St
10 S LaSalle St
Office
7.9
Highest 47%
6,859
Highest 10%
Domestic Violence Courthouse
555 W Harrison St
Courthouse
7.9
Highest 47%
1,488
Lowest 29%
Nightingale Elementary -CPS
5250 S Rockwell St
K-12 School
7.9
Highest 47%
1,111
Lowest 8%
Waterford Condominium
4170 N Marine Dr
Multifamily Housing
7.9
Highest 47%
2,642
Highest 36%
Juarez Com Academy HS -CPS
2150 S Laflin St
K-12 School
7.9
Highest 47%
2,020
Lowest 49%
1310 N RITCHIE CT
1310 N RITCHIE CT
Multifamily Housing
7.9
Highest 47%
1,436
Lowest 26%
Federal Railroad Retirement Board
844 W Rush St
Office
7.9
Highest 47%
3,030
Highest 30%
3300 3306 W DIVERSEY AVE
3300 3306 W DIVERSEY AVE
Multifamily Housing
7.9
Highest 47%
1,434
Lowest 26%
Inland Steel Building
30 W Monroe
Office
7.9
Highest 47%
2,389
Highest 41%
Granville Court Condominiums
2025 W Granville Ave
Multifamily Housing
7.9
Highest 47%
1,824
Lowest 43%
Winston Towers No. 5
7141 N Kedzie Ave
Multifamily Housing
7.9
Highest 47%
2,265
Highest 44%
Lincoln Park Tower Condominium Association
1960 N Lincoln Park West
Multifamily Housing
7.9
Highest 47%
2,624
Highest 36%

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