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.)
Baumhart Student Residence Hall 26 E Pearson St	Residence Hall/Dormitory	5.5 Lowest 13%	1,359 Lowest 22%
St. Mary of Providence 4200 N Austin Ave	Mixed Use Property	5.5 Lowest 13%	1,073 Lowest 5%
205 W Wacker 205 W Wacker Dr	Office	5.5 Lowest 13%	1,707 Lowest 38%
The Belden Stratford 2300 N Lincoln Park West	Multifamily Housing	5.5 Lowest 13%	1,484 Lowest 29%
Library Tower Condo Assoc. 520 S State St	Multifamily Housing	5.5 Lowest 13%	2,004 Lowest 49%
Albany Terrace Apts 3030 W 21st Pl	Multifamily Housing	5.5 Lowest 13%	1,432 Lowest 26%
5801 5811 S DORCHESTER AVE 🏆 5801 5811 S DORCHESTER AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.5 Lowest 13%	1,045 Lowest 4%
Lincoln Park HS -CPS 2016 N Orchard St	K-12 School	5.5 Lowest 13%	1,481 Lowest 28%
Haberdasher Square Lofts 728 W Jackson Blvd	Multifamily Housing	5.5 Lowest 13%	2,299 Highest 43%
Michigan Avenue Lofts 910 S Michigan Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.5 Lowest 13%	2,859 Highest 33%
1430 S INDIANA AVE 1430 S INDIANA AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.5 Lowest 13%	1,856 Lowest 44%
20 N Wacker Dr 20 N Wacker Dr	Office	5.5 Lowest 13%	9,538 Highest 7%
One North Dearborn 🏆 1 N Dearborn St	Office	5.4 Lowest 12%	5,886 Highest 12%
1401 S State St 1401 S State St	Multifamily Housing	5.4 Lowest 12%	1,553 Lowest 32%
Pensacola Place Apartments 4334 N Hazel St	Multifamily Housing	5.4 Lowest 12%	2,381 Highest 41%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data