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.)
1950 - SOUTH LOOP 1300 S Clinton St	Retail Store	12.0 kg/sqft Highest 10%	1,281 tons Highest 37%
840 North Michigan Avenue Acquisition LLC 840 N Michigan Ave	Retail Store	12.0 kg/sqft Highest 10%	1,043 tons Highest 44%
University High School 5840 S Kenwood Ave	K-12 School	12.0 kg/sqft Highest 10%	1,089 tons Highest 42%
North+Vine 633 W NORTH AVE	Multifamily Housing	11.9 kg/sqft Highest 10%	2,984 tons Highest 14%
1976 - LINCOLN PARK 2647 2679 N Halsted St	Retail Store	11.9 kg/sqft Highest 10%	949 tons Highest 47%
311 W. Superior 311 W Superior St	Office	11.8 kg/sqft Highest 10%	1,081 tons Highest 42%
207 4640 S Halsted St	Supermarket/Grocery Store	11.8 kg/sqft Highest 10%	1,730 tons Highest 27%
919 S California Ave. 919 S California Ave	Other	11.8 kg/sqft Highest 10%	1,001 tons Highest 45%
Harper Court 5235 S Harper Ct	Office	11.8 kg/sqft Highest 10%	2,729 tons Highest 15%
The Garland Building Office Condominium 111 N Wabash Ave	Office	11.8 kg/sqft Highest 10%	3,062 tons Highest 13%
Incubator Building (Illinois Tech) 55 W 34th Street	College/University	11.7 kg/sqft Highest 11%	846 tons Lowest 49%
Walmart Supercenter #5617 4626 W Diversey Ave	Wholesale Club/Supercenter	11.7 kg/sqft Highest 11%	1,360 tons Highest 34%
Francis W Parker School 330 W Webster Ave	K-12 School	11.7 kg/sqft Highest 11%	2,721 tons Highest 15%
Park Michigan 1212 S Michigan Ave	Multifamily Housing	11.7 kg/sqft Highest 11%	2,784 tons Highest 15%
HAROLD WASHINGTON LIBRARY (Chicago) 400 S State St	Library	11.7 kg/sqft Highest 11%	8,853 tons Highest 3%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data