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.

Legislative update! 🎉

As of late January 2024, legislation is being introduced to require new buildings use more efficient forms of water and space heating, via the Clean And Affordable Buildings Ordinance (CABO), which will reduce the number of highly polluting and inefficient that end up on this site.

If you're in Chicago, write to your alderman to support the CABO!

Chicago Buildings by Greenhouse Gas Intensity

Note: Data only includes large Chicago buildings from 2021, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

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 2021, 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 eq./sqft)	Total Greenhouse Emissions (metric tons CO₂ eq.)
Tolton Manor 6345 S Stewart	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	415 tons Lowest 19%
Eric Solorio Academy High School (CPS) 5410 S St Louis Ave	K-12 School	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	1,260 tons Highest 37%
Sauganash Elementary School (CPS) 6040 N Kilpatric Ave	K-12 School	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	405 tons Lowest 18%
Jesse Sherwood Elementary School (CPS) 245 W 57th St	K-12 School	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	307 tons Lowest 10%
Ravenswood Elementary School (CPS) 4332 N Paulina St	K-12 School	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	448 tons Lowest 22%
Frank W Gunsaulus Elementary Scholastic Academy (CPS) 4418 S Sacramento	K-12 School	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	631 tons Lowest 37%
Joseph Lovett Elementary School (CPS) 6333 W Bloomingdale Ave	K-12 School	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	502 tons Lowest 27%
John C Coonley Elementary School (CPS) 4046 N Leavitt St	K-12 School	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	632 tons Lowest 37%
James B Farnsworth Elementary School (CPS) 5414 N Linder Ave	K-12 School	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	483 tons Lowest 26%
USEF GC Century Tower LLC 182 W Lake St	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	1,501 tons Highest 31%
Union Square Condominium Assoc. 333 W Hubbard St	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	1,797 tons Highest 26%
William Howard Taft High School (CPS) 6545 W Hurlbut St	K-12 School	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	2,282 tons Highest 19%
RiverView Condominium Association 445 E North Water St	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	4,941 tons Highest 7%
345 N LaSalle Drive 345 N LaSalle St	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	4,177 tons Highest 9%
The Caravel 635 N Dearborn St	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	1,246 tons Highest 38%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data