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.)
211 West Wacker Drive 211 W Wacker Dr	Office	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,087 tons Highest 42%
1720 South Michigan Condominium Association 1720 S Michigan Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	3,073 tons Highest 13%
Sixty Thirty Condominium Association 6030 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,699 tons Highest 28%
Lake Shore Towers Cooperative Building Corporation 3920 N LAKE SHORE DR	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	534 tons Lowest 30%
One East Scott (237373) 1 E Scott St	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,061 tons Highest 43%
3430-40 N Lake Shore 3440 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	2,093 tons Highest 21%
Jefferson Tower Condominium Association 200 N Jefferson St	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,317 tons Highest 36%
1122 N Dearborn 1122 N DEARBORN ST	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,360 tons Highest 34%
1623 Belmont Ashland Assoc LP 1617 1633 W BELMONT AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	328 tons Lowest 12%
Renaissance Place at Hyde Park Condominium Association North 5200 S ELLIS AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	708 tons Lowest 42%
Jeffery Building Inc. 1949 1959 E 71ST ST	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	301 tons Lowest 9%
River West Lofts 925 W HURON ST	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,023 tons Highest 44%
The Moody Memorial Church 1609 - 1641 N LaSalle St	Worship Facility	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	837 tons Lowest 48%
Noble Street Lofts Condominium 515 517 N NOBLE ST	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	386 tons Lowest 16%
North & Kostner 4501 W North Ave	Retail Store	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,358 tons Highest 34%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data