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.)
University Center Chicago 525 S State St	Other - Lodging/Residential	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	4,066 tons Highest 9%
Metropolitan Condominiums 5320 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	2,163 tons Highest 21%
4100 Marine Dr 4100 N Marine Dr	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,453 tons Highest 32%
Hawthorne House 3450 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	3,062 tons Highest 13%
420 East Ohio - CO (hs62) 420 E Ohio St	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,916 tons Highest 24%
Maple Pointe Apartments 150 W Maple St	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,635 tons Highest 29%
Midwest Apartments 6 N Hamlin Blvd	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,345 tons Highest 35%
Seventy East 70 E Lake St	Office	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	899 tons Highest 49%
Printers Corner 170 W POLK ST	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	845 tons Lowest 49%
642 W. Addison Apartments 630 644 W ADDISON ST	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	296 tons Lowest 9%
210-220 N Green St. 210 N GREEN ST	Office	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	540 tons Lowest 30%
Park View Apartments 1936 N Clark	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,013 tons Highest 44%
Streeterville Center 233 E ERIE ST	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	1,381 tons Highest 34%
1100 N Lasalle 1100 N LASALLE DR	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	741 tons Lowest 43%
C5501WAS (25112) 5501 5511 W WASHINGTON BLVD	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 37%	693 tons Lowest 41%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data