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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Regatta Condominium Association
420 E Waterside Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 7.0
Lowest 38%
| 3,174
Highest 28%
|
Asbury Plaza
750 N Dearborn St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.0
Lowest 38%
| 2,512
Highest 38%
|
00806-The Hallmark
2960 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 7.0
Lowest 38%
| 3,075
Highest 29%
|
The National
125 S Clark St
| Office | 7.0
Lowest 38%
| 4,065
Highest 21%
|
Skybridge CA
737 W Washington Blvd
| Multifamily Housing | 7.0
Lowest 38%
| 5,731
Highest 13%
|
Long Grove House
2001 S Michigan Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 7.0
Lowest 38%
| 3,427
Highest 26%
|
1380 E HYDE PARK BLVD
1380 E HYDE PARK BLVD
| Multifamily Housing | 6.9
Lowest 36%
| 1,097
Lowest 7%
|
The Morgan at Loyola Station
1209 W Arthur Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 6.9
Lowest 36%
| 1,099
Lowest 7%
|
Payton College Prep HS -CPS
1010 N Wells St
| K-12 School | 6.9
Lowest 36%
| 1,498
Lowest 29%
|
The Hudson
750 N HUDSON AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 6.9
Lowest 36%
| 2,029
Lowest 50%
|
Vivian Carter Apts
6401 S Yale Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 6.9
Lowest 36%
| 1,039
Lowest 3%
|
(IL510) - Emerald Condo
123 - 125 S Green St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.9
Lowest 36%
| 1,742
Lowest 40%
|
Lewis & O'Malley
25 E Jackson Blvd
| College/University | 6.9
Lowest 36%
| 2,635
Highest 36%
|
AMLI River North
71 W Hubbard St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.9
Lowest 36%
| 3,121
Highest 29%
|
Medical District Apartments
901 903 S Ashland Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 6.9
Lowest 36%
| 2,358
Highest 42%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data