Electrify Chicago

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.

2017 GHG Emissions -
31M metric tons CO2 equivalent
69% buildings
24% transportation
7% waste

Chicago 2022 CAP

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. 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.

Chicago 2022 CAP

Property Name / address	Primary Property Type	Greenhouse Gas Intensity (kg CO₂/sqft)	Total Greenhouse Emissions (metric tons CO₂ eq.)
Lincoln Park Plaza 600 W Diversey Pkwy	Multifamily Housing	7.2 Lowest 42%	1,939 Lowest 46%
Sullivan HS, Roger C -CPS 6631 N Bosworth Ave	K-12 School	7.2 Lowest 42%	1,564 Lowest 32%
One Museum Park West 1201 S Prairie Ave	Multifamily Housing	7.2 Lowest 42%	4,678 Highest 17%
900/910 Lake Shore Drive 900 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	7.2 Lowest 42%	4,489 Highest 19%
The 3600 Condominium Association 3600 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	7.2 Lowest 42%	5,618 Highest 13%
77 West Wacker Drive 77 W Wacker Dr	Office	7.1 Lowest 40%	8,106 Highest 8%
IIT-Stuart School of Business 🏆 (Illinois Tech) 565 W Adams St	College/University	7.1 Lowest 40%	2,021 Lowest 49%
DePaul Center (DePaul) 1 E Jackson Blvd	College/University	7.1 Lowest 40%	4,992 Highest 16%
1 E SCHILLER ST 1 E SCHILLER ST	Multifamily Housing	7.1 Lowest 40%	1,145 Lowest 10%
10/30 South Wacker 🚩 10 S Wacker Dr	Office	7.1 Lowest 40%	20,376 #23 Highest
731 S Plymouth Ct 731 S Plymouth Ct	Multifamily Housing	7.1 Lowest 40%	1,076 Lowest 5%
River North Park 320 W Illinois St	Multifamily Housing	7.1 Lowest 40%	3,278 Highest 27%
901 South Plymouth Condominium Association 901 S Plymouth Ct	Multifamily Housing	7.1 Lowest 40%	1,155 Lowest 11%
50 East Bellevue Condo Association 50 E Bellevue Pl	Multifamily Housing	7.1 Lowest 40%	1,706 Lowest 38%
Crowne Plaza Chicago Metro 733 W Madison St	Hotel	7.1 Lowest 40%	1,425 Lowest 25%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data