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.)
Adlake Limited Partnership 320 W Ohio St	Office	3.7 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	302 tons Lowest 9%
3000 North Sheridan 3000 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	3.7 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	827 tons Lowest 48%
The Woodlawn Condominium Association 5042 5056 S WOODLAWN AVE	Multifamily Housing	3.7 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	221 tons Lowest 3%
2001 Calumet 2001 S CALUMET AVE	Multifamily Housing	3.7 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	516 tons Lowest 28%
530 W Arlington LLC 530 W ARLINGTON PL	Multifamily Housing	3.7 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	251 tons Lowest 5%
Bradley Business Center II 2500 W Bradley Pl	Other	3.7 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	1,384 tons Highest 34%
4400 Grove Apartments - South Bldg 4434 S COTTAGE GROVE AVE	Multifamily Housing	3.6 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	207 tons Lowest 3%
Blue Moon Lofts Condominium 215 N. Aberdeen St.	Multifamily Housing	3.6 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	297 tons Lowest 9%
220 East Walton Condo 220 E Walton Pl	Multifamily Housing	3.6 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	362 tons Lowest 14%
2700 Club Condominium Association 2700 N Halsted St	Multifamily Housing	3.6 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	310 tons Lowest 10%
The Broadmoor Apartments 7600 N Bosworth	Multifamily Housing	3.6 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	465 tons Lowest 24%
Epic Academy Charter High School (CPS) 8255 S Houston Ave	K-12 School	3.6 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	254 tons Lowest 6%
StThomastheApostle_School 🏆 5472 S Kimbark Ave	K-12 School	3.6 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	227 tons Lowest 4%
Frank I Bennett Elementary School (CPS) 10115 S Prairie Ave	K-12 School	3.6 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	243 tons Lowest 5%
363 Erie IL Partners LLC 363 W Erie St	Office	3.6 kg/sqft Lowest 7%	428 tons Lowest 20%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data