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.)
2101 S Wabash Ave 2101 S WABASH AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	188 tons Lowest 2%
20 E Cedar Condominium 20 E CEDAR ST	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	994 tons Highest 45%
3963 W. Belmont 3963 W BELMONT AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	1,469 tons Highest 32%
Hollywood Property 1040 W HOLLYWOOD AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	362 tons Lowest 14%
544 W. Melrose St. 544 W MELROSE ST	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	300 tons Lowest 9%
447-457 W. Wellington Ave. 447 457 W WELLINGTON AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	305 tons Lowest 10%
625 N Michigan Avenue 625 N Michigan Ave	Office	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	2,104 tons Highest 21%
Daley Center 14 E Jackson Blvd	College/University	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	2,185 tons Highest 20%
5034 S Woodlawn Ave 5034 5040 S WOODLAWN AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	364 tons Lowest 14%
239-Senior Suites of Marquette Village 7430 S ROCKWELL ST	Senior Living Community	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	460 tons Lowest 23%
2609 W. Belmont Apartments 2609 W BELMONT AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 39%	519 tons Lowest 28%
The Residences at Eight East Huron (gh23) 8 E Huron St	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,002 tons Highest 45%
The Western 1912-1920 N Milwaukee 1920 N Milwaukee Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	356 tons Lowest 14%
SP/RPA 1325 Apartments LLC 1325 N WELLS ST	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	356 tons Lowest 14%
Xavier (xv01) 625 W Division St	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,354 tons Highest 34%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data