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.)
10 South Riverside Plaza 10 S Riverside Plz	Office	6.4 Lowest 27%	5,064 Highest 16%
Union Square Condominium Association 333 W Hubbard St	Multifamily Housing	6.4 Lowest 27%	1,962 Lowest 47%
1500 Lakeshore Drive Building Corp. 1500 N Lakeshore Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.4 Lowest 27%	1,850 Lowest 44%
333 N Michigan 333 N Michigan Ave	Office	6.4 Lowest 27%	2,281 Highest 44%
Bowen Environmental Studies HS -CPS 2710 E 89th St	K-12 School	6.4 Lowest 27%	1,896 Lowest 45%
NEMA Chicago 1200 S Indiana Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.4 Lowest 27%	7,151 Highest 9%
1130 S Michigan Ave 1130 S Michigan Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.4 Lowest 27%	4,566 Highest 18%
225 W Wacker 225 W Wacker Dr	Office	6.3 Lowest 25%	4,544 Highest 19%
123 N Wacker 123 N Wacker	Office	6.3 Lowest 25%	3,708 Highest 24%
Horizon House Inc. 5733 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	6.3 Lowest 25%	1,738 Lowest 40%
801 South Plymouth Condo Association 801 S Plymouth Ct	Multifamily Housing	6.3 Lowest 25%	1,564 Lowest 32%
The Lincoln Common 2335 N Lincoln Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.3 Lowest 25%	1,471 Lowest 28%
The Private Residences of Ritchie Court 1313 N Ritchie Ct	Multifamily Housing	6.3 Lowest 25%	1,218 Lowest 15%
Metropolitan Condominiums 5320 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	6.3 Lowest 25%	2,330 Highest 42%
5301 5317 S HYDE PARK BLVD 5301 5317 S HYDE PARK BLVD	Multifamily Housing	6.3 Lowest 25%	1,510 Lowest 30%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data