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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Plaza 440 Private Residences
440 N Wabash Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 7.9
Highest 47%
| 3,740
Highest 23%
|
Park Place Tower I CA
🚩
655 W Irving Park Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 7.9
Highest 47%
| 7,805
Highest 9%
|
Citigroup Center
🚩
500 W Madison St
| Office | 7.8
Highest 49%
| 14,397 #43 Highest
|
155 North Wacker
155 N Wacker Dr
| Office | 7.8
Highest 49%
| 10,905
Highest 5%
|
303 W Madison
303 W Madison St
| Office | 7.8
Highest 49%
| 2,712
Highest 35%
|
018110 - Union Tower, LLC
550 W Van Buren
| Office | 7.8
Highest 49%
| 2,585
Highest 37%
|
Gleacher Center
450 N Cityfront Plz
| College/University | 7.8
Highest 49%
| 1,672
Lowest 36%
|
One East Scott Condo Association
1 E Scott St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.8
Highest 49%
| 1,419
Lowest 25%
|
200 W GRAND AVE
200 W GRAND AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 7.8
Highest 49%
| 1,494
Lowest 29%
|
Harlan Comm Academy -CPS
9652 S Michigan Ave
| K-12 School | 7.8
Highest 49%
| 1,332
Lowest 21%
|
630 N Franklin Condominium Association
630 N Franklin St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.8
Highest 49%
| 1,751
Lowest 41%
|
Paramount Lofts Condominium Association
1645 W Ogden
| Multifamily Housing | 7.8
Highest 49%
| 2,131
Highest 47%
|
209 East Lake Shore Drive
209 E LAKE SHORE DR
| Multifamily Housing | 7.8
Highest 49%
| 2,015
Lowest 49%
|
(IL610) - 2400 Lakeview Condo
2400 N Lakeview Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 7.8
Highest 49%
| 2,289
Highest 43%
|
1720 South Michigan Condominium Association
1720 S Michigan Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 7.8
Highest 49%
| 4,110
Highest 20%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data