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.)
2 South Leavitt Condominium Association 2 S Leavitt St	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	227 tons Lowest 4%
Fulton Place Condominium 657 W Fulton St	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	474 tons Lowest 25%
St. Ailbe Faith & St. Ailbe Love Apartments 1244 East 93rd Street	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	740 tons Lowest 43%
John Hancock College Preparatory High School (CPS) 4034 W 56th St	K-12 School	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	696 tons Lowest 41%
Fort Dearborn Elementary School (CPS) 9001 S Throop St	K-12 School	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	433 tons Lowest 21%
The Gold Coast 71 E DIVISION ST	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	822 tons Lowest 48%
5100 Hyde Park Association 5100 S HYDE PARK BLVD	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	460 tons Lowest 23%
730 North Franklin 730 N Franklin St	Office	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	411 tons Lowest 19%
New Mildred LLC 2900 2914 N MILDRED AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	251 tons Lowest 5%
Parvenu Condominium Association 1000 W LELAND AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	590 tons Lowest 34%
Fulton Court Townhome Association 660 W Fulton Market	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	563 tons Lowest 32%
Ridgemoor Estates Condominium Association IV 6456 6460 W BELLE PLAINE AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	208 tons Lowest 3%
Riverpoint Center - 16281101 1730 W Fullerton Ave	Strip Mall	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	858 tons Lowest 49%
Cityfront Place - 400 N McClurg Ct 400 N McClurg Ct	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	2,300 tons Highest 19%
633 N St. Clair 633 N St Clair St	Office	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	2,623 tons Highest 16%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data