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.)
JeffJack 601 W Jackson	Multifamily Housing	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	1,318 tons Highest 35%
Matthew Manor 271 N Albany Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	301 tons Lowest 9%
Philip Rogers Elementary School (CPS) 7345 N Washtenaw Ave	K-12 School	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	515 tons Lowest 28%
Robert Healy Elementary School (CPS) 3010 S Parnell Ave	K-12 School	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	660 tons Lowest 39%
William G Hibbard Elementary School (CPS) 3244 W Ainslie St	K-12 School	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	966 tons Highest 46%
Claremont Academy Elementary School (CPS) 6315 S Claremont Ave	K-12 School	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	647 tons Lowest 38%
Charles N Holden Elementary School (CPS) 1104 W 31st St	K-12 School	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	565 tons Lowest 32%
John J Pershing Elementary Humanities Magnet (CPS) 3200 S Calumet Ave	K-12 School	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	735 tons Lowest 43%
Christian Ebinger Elementary School (CPS) 7350 W Pratt Ave	K-12 School	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	537 tons Lowest 30%
Ellen Mitchell Elementary School (CPS) 2233 W Ohio St	K-12 School	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	320 tons Lowest 11%
State and Chestnut 845 N State St	Multifamily Housing	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	2,582 tons Highest 16%
720 Gordon Terrace Condominium Association 720 W Gordon Ter	Multifamily Housing	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	1,630 tons Highest 29%
Jackson Shore Coop Apartments Corp 5490 S Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	568 tons Lowest 32%
Carl Sandburg Village Condo Association #1 1355 N Sandburg Ter	Multifamily Housing	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	4,119 tons Highest 9%
(IL1074) ParkShore Condominium 195 N Harbor Dr	Multifamily Housing	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 35%	5,787 tons Highest 6%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data