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.)
Lenart Elementary Regional Gifted Center (CPS) 8101 S LaSalle St	K-12 School	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	279 tons Lowest 7%
Capitol Hill Lofts 625 631 W JACKSON BLVD	Multifamily Housing	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	551 tons Lowest 31%
525 Deming 525 W DEMING PL	Multifamily Housing	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	432 tons Lowest 20%
Pope Building Condominium Association 633 S PLYMOUTH CT	Multifamily Housing	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	570 tons Lowest 33%
Royalton Condominium Association 6800 N CALIFORNIA AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	572 tons Lowest 33%
The Marlborough 400 414 W DEMING PL	Multifamily Housing	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	907 tons Highest 49%
William Rainey Harper High School (CPS) 6520 S Wood St	K-12 School	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	1,016 tons Highest 44%
Lunt Avenue Condominium & Health Club 1327 1337 W LUNT AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	274 tons Lowest 7%
Dearborn North 1117 1123 N DEARBORN ST	Multifamily Housing	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	388 tons Lowest 17%
Estes I LLC 1329 1341 W ESTES AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	312 tons Lowest 10%
Barry Building IV 445 W BARRY AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	382 tons Lowest 16%
Edgewater Flats Condominium 1215 1225 W GRANVILLE AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	236 tons Lowest 5%
711 W Gordon Terrace 711 W GORDON TER	Multifamily Housing	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	561 tons Lowest 32%
Albert G Lane Technical High School (CPS) 2501 W Addison St	K-12 School	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	3,309 tons Highest 12%
One East Wacker 1 E Wacker Dr	Office	4.6 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	3,188 tons Highest 12%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data