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.)
CA Condos on Adams 1116 W ADAMS ST	Multifamily Housing	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	774 tons Lowest 45%
Ellis Street Apartments 4721 4729 S Ellis St	Multifamily Housing	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	312 tons Lowest 10%
18th Street Lofts 1801 S Michigan Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	336 tons Lowest 12%
HighSchool_StFrancisdeSalesHS 10155 S Ewing Ave	K-12 School	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	463 tons Lowest 23%
Hanson Park Elementary School (CPS) 2301 N Central Ave	K-12 School	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	499 tons Lowest 27%
John Palmer Elementary School (CPS) 5501 N Kenneth Ave	K-12 School	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	628 tons Lowest 37%
Abraham Lincoln Elementary School (CPS) 615 W Kemper Pl	K-12 School	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	573 tons Lowest 33%
333 N Jefferson Condo Association 333 N Jefferson St	Multifamily Housing	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	321 tons Lowest 11%
Chicago Residential Inc 2440 N Lakeview Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	1,260 tons Highest 37%
One River Place Condominium Association 758 N Larrabee St	Multifamily Housing	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	1,811 tons Highest 26%
Vue20 Condo Association 1845 S Michigan Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	1,238 tons Highest 38%
Edgewater Beach Apartment Corporation 5555 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	3,077 tons Highest 13%
1000 Condominium Association 1000 N Lake Shore Plz	Multifamily Housing	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	2,008 tons Highest 23%
Hampton House Condominiums 1715 1733 E 53RD ST	Multifamily Housing	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	880 tons Lowest 50%
Bellarmine Hall-ID#173888 6628 N SHERIDAN RD	Residence Hall/Dormitory	5.0 kg/sqft Lowest 23%	427 tons Lowest 20%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data