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.)
933 Van Buren Condominium Association 933 W Van Buren St	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	1,458 tons Highest 32%
3900 Lake Shore Drive Condominium Association 3900 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	1,290 tons Highest 36%
University Park CA 1451 E 55th St	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	2,636 tons Highest 16%
Coronado Apartments LLC 1061 W ROSEMONT AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	392 tons Lowest 17%
2738 N. Pine Grove 2738 N PINE GROVE AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	510 tons Lowest 27%
Printers Row Condominium Association 711 S DEARBORN ST	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	1,108 tons Highest 41%
Hyman G Rickover Naval Academy High School 5700 W BERTEAU AVE	K-12 School	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	573 tons Lowest 33%
One East 14th Place 5 E 14th Pl	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	760 tons Lowest 45%
One Superior Place - CO (np52) 1 W Superior St	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	3,235 tons Highest 12%
Sterling Condominium, The 4101 4123 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	341 tons Lowest 12%
Fifteen Thirty North State Parkway Building Corporation 1530 1534 N STATE PKWY	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	372 tons Lowest 15%
5631-35 N Kenmore 5631 5635 N KENMORE AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	276 tons Lowest 7%
6214 N. Winthrop, LLC 6214 6218 N WINTHROP AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	285 tons Lowest 8%
EFA LLC 452 W ALDINE AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	434 tons Lowest 21%
Bicycle Station Lofts Condominium Association 1632 S INDIANA AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.9 kg/sqft Lowest 22%	291 tons Lowest 9%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data