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.)
Edward N Hurley Elementary School (CPS) 3849 W 69th Pl	K-12 School	10.1 kg/sqft Highest 15%	559 tons Lowest 32%
Brooks Building LLC 223 W Jackson Blvd	Office	10.1 kg/sqft Highest 15%	1,690 tons Highest 28%
The Seneca - CO (sc22) 200 E Chestnut St	Multifamily Housing	10.1 kg/sqft Highest 15%	1,699 tons Highest 28%
Pendry Chicago 230 N Michigan Ave	Hotel	10.1 kg/sqft Highest 15%	3,032 tons Highest 13%
Lake Shore Plaza 445 E Ohio St	Multifamily Housing	10.1 kg/sqft Highest 15%	4,213 tons Highest 9%
Navy Pier, Inc. 📷 600 E Grand Ave	Mixed Use Property	10.1 kg/sqft Highest 15%	11,655 tons Highest 2%
900 North Michigan 🚩 900 North Michigan	Mixed Use Property	10.1 kg/sqft Highest 15%	21,506 tons #13 Highest
330 WELLS OWNER LLC 330 S Wells St	Multifamily Housing	10.1 kg/sqft Highest 15%	986 tons Highest 46%
Corboy Law Center-ID# 101971 25 E Pearson St	College/University	10.1 kg/sqft Highest 15%	3,111 tons Highest 13%
IL0054ZZ - CLARK FEDERAL BLDG 536 S Clark St	Office	10.1 kg/sqft Highest 15%	6,395 tons Highest 5%
C5957MAD (22142) 5957-73 W Madison St	Multifamily Housing	10.0 kg/sqft Highest 15%	623 tons Lowest 37%
Woodlawn Social Services Center 950 E 61st St	Office	10.0 kg/sqft Highest 15%	659 tons Lowest 39%
John F Kennedy High School (CPS) 6325 W 56th St	K-12 School	10.0 kg/sqft Highest 15%	2,349 tons Highest 18%
750 N. Orleans 750 N Orleans St	Office	10.0 kg/sqft Highest 15%	744 tons Lowest 44%
House of Blues Chicago 329 N Dearborn St	Performing Arts	10.0 kg/sqft Highest 15%	547 tons Lowest 31%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data