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.)
Metro 1200 W MONROE	Multifamily Housing	4.7 Lowest 5%	1,315 Lowest 20%
215 West Apartments 215 W Washington St	Multifamily Housing	4.7 Lowest 5%	3,171 Highest 28%
3240 N LAKE SHORE DR 3240 N LAKE SHORE DR	Multifamily Housing	4.7 Lowest 5%	1,186 Lowest 14%
Marshall Metro HS -CPS 3250 W Adams St	K-12 School	4.7 Lowest 5%	1,733 Lowest 39%
3520 Lake Shore Drive CA 3520 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	4.7 Lowest 5%	1,328 Lowest 21%
The Belmont by Reside 3170 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	4.7 Lowest 5%	2,236 Highest 45%
Chase Tower Chicago 🚩 10 S Dearborn St	Financial Office	4.6 Lowest 5%	11,190 Highest 5%
SIR Chicago 400 S Jefferson St	Office	4.6 Lowest 5%	1,268 Lowest 18%
826 W Montrose Ave 826 W Montrose Ave	Multifamily Housing	4.6 Lowest 5%	2,174 Highest 46%
Piccolo Specialty -CPS 🏆 1040 N Keeler Ave	K-12 School	4.6 Lowest 5%	1,016 #20 Lowest
Gage Park HS -CPS 🏆 5600 S Rockwell St	K-12 School	4.6 Lowest 5%	1,019 #22 Lowest
Roosevelt Collection 150 W Roosevelt Rd	Mixed Use Property	4.6 Lowest 5%	4,988 Highest 16%
33 W Ontario Condominium Association 33 W Ontario St	Multifamily Housing	4.6 Lowest 5%	4,849 Highest 16%
Trio Tower 670 W Wayman St	Multifamily Housing	4.5 Lowest 4%	1,250 Lowest 17%
The Paragon Chicago 1326 S Michigan Avenue	Multifamily Housing	4.5 Lowest 4%	2,589 Highest 37%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data