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.)
The Barry Condominium, Inc. 3100 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	891 tons Highest 49%
Park Boulevard IIA - 3622 S State 3622 S STATE ST	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	498 tons Lowest 27%
Shakespeare Building Corporation 2236 2296 N LINCOLN PARK WEST AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	487 tons Lowest 26%
Cornerstone Apartments 652 E 50TH ST	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	363 tons Lowest 14%
Snell-Hitchcock 5709 S ELLIS AVE	Residence Hall/Dormitory	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	379 tons Lowest 16%
212 West Superior Street 210 222 W Superior St	Office	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	469 tons Lowest 24%
EnV Chicago 161 W Kinzie St	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	2,005 tons Highest 23%
Coast at Lakeshore East 345 E Wacker Dr	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	2,948 tons Highest 14%
C4901DRE (22116) 4901 4913 S DREXEL BLVD	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	437 tons Lowest 21%
4420 N Clark Condominium Association 4418 4424 N CLARK ST	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	271 tons Lowest 7%
The Legacy HB at Clarendon Park 4520 N CLARENDON AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	404 tons Lowest 18%
3950 W Bryn Mawr 3950 W BRYN MAWR AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	308 tons Lowest 10%
Parkshore Cooperative 1755 E 55TH ST	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	943 tons Highest 47%
233 E Walton Place Building 233 E Walton Place	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	360 tons Lowest 14%
14 West Elm Apartments 12 18 W ELM ST	Multifamily Housing	5.1 kg/sqft Lowest 25%	651 tons Lowest 39%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data