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.)
Infinite Chicago 28 E Jackson Blvd	Multifamily Housing	5.4 Lowest 12%	1,166 Lowest 12%
Taft HS -CPS 6545 W Hurlbut St	K-12 School	5.4 Lowest 12%	2,113 Highest 48%
Amundsen HS -CPS 5110 N Damen Ave	K-12 School	5.4 Lowest 12%	1,193 Lowest 14%
One River Place Condominium Association 758 N Larrabee St	Multifamily Housing	5.4 Lowest 12%	1,975 Lowest 48%
CityView Condominium Association 440 N McClurg Ct	Multifamily Housing	5.4 Lowest 12%	2,713 Highest 34%
The Sinclair 1201 N LaSalle Street	Multifamily Housing	5.4 Lowest 12%	3,187 Highest 28%
One Museum Park East Condominium Association 1211 S Prairie Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.4 Lowest 12%	5,187 Highest 15%
Edgewater Beach Apartments Corporation 5555 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	5.4 Lowest 12%	3,313 Highest 27%
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 8765 W Higgins Rd	Office	5.3 Lowest 11%	1,333 Lowest 21%
Randolph-Wells Building 205 W Randolph St	Office	5.3 Lowest 11%	1,053 Lowest 4%
The Towers 1221 N DEARBORN ST	Multifamily Housing	5.3 Lowest 11%	1,149 Lowest 11%
Harper HS -CPS 6520 S Wood St	K-12 School	5.3 Lowest 11%	1,173 Lowest 13%
901 W MADISON 901 W MADISON	Multifamily Housing	5.3 Lowest 11%	1,433 Lowest 26%
Surfside Condominium 🏆 5815 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	5.3 Lowest 11%	1,007 #4 Lowest
720 S WELLS ST 720 S WELLS ST	Multifamily Housing	5.3 Lowest 11%	2,422 Highest 40%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data