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Electrify Chicago

According to the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan(opens in a new tab), 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.

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(opens in a new tab). 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.)
Rosenwald Courts
4643 S Wabash
Multifamily Housing
6.4
Lowest 27%
1,373
Lowest 23%
North & Kostner
4501 W North Ave
Retail Store
6.4
Lowest 27%
1,514
Lowest 30%
Chestnut Place Apartments
850 N State St
Multifamily Housing
6.4
Lowest 27%
1,651
Lowest 35%
Adler Planetarium
1300 S Lake Shore Dr
Museum
6.4
Lowest 27%
1,117
Lowest 8%
Back Of The Yard -CPS
2111 W 47th St
K-12 School
6.4
Lowest 27%
1,369
Lowest 23%
20 North Michigan Avenue
20 N Michigan Ave
Office
6.4
Lowest 27%
1,369
Lowest 23%
3240 N ASHLAND AVE
3240 N ASHLAND AVE
Multifamily Housing
6.4
Lowest 27%
1,130
Lowest 9%
1225 Old Town
1225 N Wells St
Multifamily Housing
6.4
Lowest 27%
2,791
Highest 33%
224 S Michigan Ave
224 S Michigan Ave
Office
6.4
Lowest 27%
2,628
Highest 36%
17 N State LLC
17 N State St
Office
6.4
Lowest 27%
2,623
Highest 36%
Jackson Towers Condo Association
🏆
5555 S Everett Ave
Multifamily Housing
6.4
Lowest 27%
1,008
#8 Lowest
Michigan Avenue Tower Condominium Association
1250 S Michigan Ave
Multifamily Housing
6.4
Lowest 27%
2,596
Highest 36%
Chicago Acad Elementary -CPS
3400 N Austin Ave
K-12 School
6.4
Lowest 27%
1,607
Lowest 34%
5230 5244 N SHERIDAN RD
5230 5244 N SHERIDAN RD
Multifamily Housing
6.4
Lowest 27%
1,283
Lowest 19%
750 N. Rush
750 N Rush St
Multifamily Housing
6.4
Lowest 27%
2,095
Highest 49%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data (opens in a new tab)