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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Lafayette Plaza Housing Cooperative
50 W 71st St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4
Lowest 45%
| 1,648
Lowest 35%
|
33 N LaSalle St
33 N LaSalle St
| Office | 7.4
Lowest 45%
| 3,539
Highest 25%
|
Lake View Towers Apartments
4550 N Clarendon Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4
Lowest 45%
| 3,331
Highest 27%
|
33738-Chicago Marriott Downtown
540 N Michigan Ave
| Hotel | 7.4
Lowest 45%
| 7,049
Highest 10%
|
200 West Monroe
200 W Monroe
| Office | 7.3
Lowest 43%
| 5,116
Highest 15%
|
899 South Plymouth Court Condominium Association
899 S Plymouth Ct
| Multifamily Housing | 7.3
Lowest 43%
| 1,935
Lowest 46%
|
AMLI 900
900 S Clark St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.3
Lowest 43%
| 3,522
Highest 25%
|
Northwest Tower Apartments
🏆
1170 W Erie St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.3
Lowest 43%
| 1,022
#25 Lowest
|
Northwest Armory
1551 N Kedzie Ave
| Other | 7.3
Lowest 43%
| 1,500
Lowest 29%
|
Residence at RiverBend Condominium Association
333 N Canal St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.3
Lowest 43%
| 3,600
Highest 24%
|
77 West Huron Street
77 W Huron St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.3
Lowest 43%
| 2,283
Highest 44%
|
1100 N Dearborn St
1100 N Dearborn St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.3
Lowest 43%
| 1,313
Lowest 20%
|
SpringHill Suites - Residence Inn
400 410 N Dearborn St
| Hotel | 7.3
Lowest 43%
| 2,681
Highest 35%
|
332 Property LLC
332 S Michigan Ave
| Office | 7.3
Lowest 43%
| 3,848
Highest 22%
|
Congress Plaza Hotel
520 S Michigan Ave
| Hotel | 7.3
Lowest 43%
| 4,372
Highest 19%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data