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.) |
---|---|---|---|
200 N. Dearborn CA
200 N Dearborn St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 2,538
Highest 38%
|
State & Chestnut
845 N State St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 3,175
Highest 28%
|
200 W Jackson Boulevard Bldg
200 W Jackson Blvd
| Office | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 3,870
Highest 22%
|
111 West Jackson
111 W Jackson Blvd
| Office | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 4,738
Highest 17%
|
Newberry Plaza Condominium Association
1030 N State St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 5,374
Highest 14%
|
5455 Edgewater Plaza Condominium Association
5455 N Sheridan Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 3,817
Highest 23%
|
Hartford Plaza
150 S Wacker Dr
| Office | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 9,155
Highest 7%
|
1350-60 N LSD
1350 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 7.1
Lowest 40%
| 5,177
Highest 15%
|
333 W Wacker
333 W Wacker Dr
| Office | 7.0
Lowest 38%
| 7,137
Highest 10%
|
Menards
🏆
2601 N Clybourn St
| Retail Store | 7.0
Lowest 38%
| 1,012
#12 Lowest
|
Harold Washington College
30 E Lake St
| College/University | 7.0
Lowest 38%
| 2,430
Highest 40%
|
Wilson 669 North Michigan Avenue LLC
669 N Michigan Ave
| Retail Store | 7.0
Lowest 38%
| 1,039
Lowest 3%
|
The Park Monroe Condominium Homes Association
65 E Monroe St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.0
Lowest 38%
| 3,362
Highest 27%
|
500 S DEARBORN ST
500 S DEARBORN ST
| Hotel | 7.0
Lowest 38%
| 1,047
Lowest 4%
|
JeffJack Apartments
601 W Jackson
| Multifamily Housing | 7.0
Lowest 38%
| 1,365
Lowest 23%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data