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.)
Swartzberg House 3101 W Touhy Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	487 tons Lowest 26%
St. Sabina Elders Village 1222 W 79th St	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	449 tons Lowest 22%
The Pierre Condominium 2100 N Lincoln Park West	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,104 tons Highest 41%
3900 W Bryn Mawr 3900 W BRYN MAWR AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	352 tons Lowest 13%
1420 North Lake Shore Drive 1420 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	938 tons Highest 47%
Ole A Thorp Elementary Scholastic Academy (CPS) 6024 W Warwick Ave	K-12 School	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	542 tons Lowest 30%
Joseph E Gary Elementary School (CPS) 3740 W 31st St	K-12 School	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	766 tons Lowest 45%
Jean Baptiste Beaubien Elementary School (CPS) 5025 N Laramie Ave	K-12 School	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	687 tons Lowest 40%
William H Seward Communication Arts Academy ES (CPS) 4600 S Hermitage Ave	K-12 School	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	439 tons Lowest 21%
Grover Cleveland Elementary School (CPS) 3121 W Byron St	K-12 School	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	561 tons Lowest 32%
Charles S Deneen Elementary School (CPS) 7240 S Wabash Ave	K-12 School	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	512 tons Lowest 28%
Charles Gates Dawes Elementary School (CPS) 3810 W 81st Place	K-12 School	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	524 tons Lowest 29%
Mount Greenwood Elementary School (CPS) 10841 S Homan Ave	K-12 School	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	650 tons Lowest 38%
990 West Fullerton Building 990 W Fullerton Ave	College/University	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	532 tons Lowest 29%
444 North Wells Street 444 N Wells St	Office	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	423 tons Lowest 20%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data