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.)
Lightner Building 1006 1012 S MICHIGAN AVE	Office	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	326 tons Lowest 11%
McKinley Park Lofts Condominium Association 2319 2333 W PERSHING RD	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	857 tons Lowest 49%
4521-23 North Malden Street 4521 4523 N MALDEN ST	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	213 tons Lowest 3%
529 West Wellington 521 541 W WELLINGTON AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	325 tons Lowest 11%
Illume Condominiums 111 S PEORIA ST	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	915 tons Highest 48%
TransUnion LLC 555 W Adams St	Office	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	1,273 tons Highest 37%
TLC Touhy LLC 1329 1337 W TOUHY AVE	Multifamily Housing	4.1 kg/sqft Lowest 11%	235 tons Lowest 4%
Superior House Condo 366 W. Superior	Multifamily Housing	4.0 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	496 tons Lowest 27%
CA Washington 27 N Aberdeen St	Multifamily Housing	4.0 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	707 tons Lowest 42%
1255 N. State Parkway Condominium Association 1255 N State Parkway	Multifamily Housing	4.0 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	440 tons Lowest 21%
Ryerson Laboratory 1118 1132 E 58th St	Laboratory	4.0 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	274 tons Lowest 7%
Mayfair Condominium 189 E Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	4.0 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	1,060 tons Highest 43%
Disney II Magnet High School (CPS) 3900 N Lawndale Ave	K-12 School	4.0 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	721 tons Lowest 42%
Lorenz Brentano Math & Science Academy ES (CPS) 2723 N Fairfield Ave	K-12 School	4.0 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	474 tons Lowest 25%
Arthur Dixon Elementary School (CPS) 8306 S St Lawrence Ave	K-12 School	4.0 kg/sqft Lowest 10%	403 tons Lowest 18%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data