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.)
3611 W. Montrose Condominium Association 3611 W Montrose Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	256 tons Lowest 6%
Reside on Roscoe 532 W Roscoe	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	241 tons Lowest 5%
StClement_School 642 W Deming Pl	K-12 School	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	383 tons Lowest 16%
StAlphonsus_School 1439 W Wellington Ave	K-12 School	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	278 tons Lowest 7%
Ozanam Village 251 N Albany Avenue	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	257 tons Lowest 6%
Parkside Nine II 544 W Oak St	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	719 tons Lowest 42%
Parkside Nine I 545 W Division	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	704 tons Lowest 41%
Stone Elementary Scholastic Academy (CPS) 6239 N Leavitt St	K-12 School	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	362 tons Lowest 14%
William B Ogden Elementary School (CPS) 24 W Walton St	K-12 School	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	672 tons Lowest 40%
320 Oakdale Condo 320 322 W OAKDALE AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	668 tons Lowest 40%
330 N Clinton Condo Assoc 330 N Clinton St	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	327 tons Lowest 11%
1400 Museum Park Condo 100 E 14th St	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	2,139 tons Highest 21%
340 West Superior Condominium Association 340 W Superior St	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	1,451 tons Highest 32%
Park 1500 Loft 📷 1500 W Monroe St	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	1,963 tons Highest 23%
Thorndale Beach North Condominium Association 5901 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	1,235 tons Highest 38%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data