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.)
727 West Madison Street 727 W Madison St	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	3,364 tons Highest 11%
505 N. Green St. 505 N GREEN ST	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	271 tons Lowest 7%
Sedgwick at Locust 367 W LOCUST ST	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	449 tons Lowest 22%
545 Investors, LLC 545 McClurg Ct	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	3,607 tons Highest 11%
Green Street Lofts 400 S Green St	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	585 tons Lowest 34%
Sheridan Shore Courts Condominium Association 7021 7035 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	389 tons Lowest 17%
Olympia Lofts Condominium Association 831 43 W Adams St	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	510 tons Lowest 27%
Bank Note Place Condominium Association, Inc. 120 E Cullerton St	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	859 tons Lowest 49%
Portage Park Elementary School (CPS) 5330 W Berteau Ave	K-12 School	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	718 tons Lowest 42%
Dr Jorge Prieto Math and Science (CPS) 2231 N Central Ave	K-12 School	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	569 tons Lowest 33%
StSabina_School 🏆 7801 S Throop St	K-12 School	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	357 tons Lowest 14%
Marquette Elementary School (CPS) 6550 S Richmond St	K-12 School	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	846 tons Lowest 49%
Newton Bateman Elementary School (CPS) 4200 N Richmond St	K-12 School	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	751 tons Lowest 44%
560 W Fulton Condo Assoc. 560 W Fulton	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	314 tons Lowest 10%
325 North Wells 325 N Wells St	College/University	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	761 tons Lowest 45%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data