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.)
Brooks College Prep. Acad - CPS 250 E 111th St	K-12 School	6.6 Lowest 31%	1,739 Lowest 40%
10 E. Delaware Condominium Association 10 E Delaware Pl	Multifamily Housing	6.6 Lowest 31%	2,444 Highest 40%
(IL247) - River Place on the Park Condo 700 N Larrabee St	Multifamily Housing	6.6 Lowest 31%	2,022 Lowest 49%
73 E LAKE ST 73 E LAKE ST	Multifamily Housing	6.6 Lowest 31%	1,956 Lowest 47%
Campus Residential North Commons (UChicago) 5500 S UNIVERSITY AVE	Residence Hall/Dormitory	6.6 Lowest 31%	2,776 Highest 34%
2631 S Indiana Ave 2631 S Indiana Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.6 Lowest 31%	1,638 Lowest 35%
Wrigley Building 410 N MICHIGAN AVE	Office	6.6 Lowest 31%	4,087 Highest 20%
Lake Parc Place 3939 - 3983 S Lake Park Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.6 Lowest 31%	1,933 Lowest 46%
474 North Lake Shore Drive 474 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.6 Lowest 31%	3,694 Highest 24%
Hilton Chicago 🚩 720 S Michigan Ave	Hotel	6.6 Lowest 31%	13,461 #48 Highest
Regents Park 🚩 5020 - 5050 S Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.6 Lowest 31%	9,661 Highest 7%
The Palmer House Hotel 🚩 17 E Monroe St	Hotel	6.6 Lowest 31%	11,168 Highest 5%
One South Wacker 1 S Wacker	Office	6.5 Lowest 29%	8,730 Highest 8%
550 W Washington 550 W Washington	Office	6.5 Lowest 29%	2,559 Highest 37%
Bennett Brothers Building (Hartman Building) 30 32 E ADAMS ST	Office	6.5 Lowest 29%	1,131 Lowest 9%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data