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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Parc Chestnut Condominium Association
849 N Franklin St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.5
Lowest 46%
| 2,838
Highest 33%
|
162 North State Street
162 N State St
| Residence Hall/Dormitory | 7.5
Lowest 46%
| 2,373
Highest 42%
|
Senn Achievement Academy -CPS
5900 N Glenwood Ave
| K-12 School | 7.5
Lowest 46%
| 2,179
Highest 46%
|
Americana Towers Condominium
1636 N Wells St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.5
Lowest 46%
| 2,651
Highest 35%
|
200 E. Delaware Condominium Association
200 E Delaware Pl
| Multifamily Housing | 7.5
Lowest 46%
| 2,557
Highest 37%
|
Third Prairie Shores, LLC
3001 S King Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 7.5
Lowest 46%
| 2,161
Highest 47%
|
Clark-Adams
105 W Adams St
| Office | 7.5
Lowest 46%
| 3,664
Highest 24%
|
Renaissance Chicago Downtown
1 W Wacker Dr
| Hotel | 7.5
Lowest 46%
| 4,017
Highest 21%
|
233 N Michigan Ave
233 N Michigan Ave
| Office | 7.5
Lowest 46%
| 8,698
Highest 8%
|
CNA Building
🚩
333 S Wabash Ave
| Office | 7.5
Lowest 46%
| 10,566
Highest 6%
|
200 W Madison
200 W Madison
| Office | 7.4
Lowest 45%
| 7,400
Highest 9%
|
120 North LaSalle
120 N LaSalle St
| Office | 7.4
Lowest 45%
| 3,401
Highest 26%
|
20 W Kinzie St
20 W Kinzie St
| Office | 7.4
Lowest 45%
| 2,918
Highest 32%
|
1155 E 60th St
(UChicago)
1155 E 60th St
| College/University | 7.4
Lowest 45%
| 1,375
Lowest 23%
|
The Franklin
🚩
227 W Monroe
| Office | 7.4
Lowest 45%
| 22,015 #16 Highest
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data