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.)
Francisco I Madero Middle School (CPS) 3202 W 28th St	K-12 School	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	517 tons Lowest 28%
Catalpa Gardens Condominium Association 1122 W Catalpa Ave	Multifamily Housing	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	1,367 tons Highest 34%
River Place on the Park Condo 700 N Larrabee St	Multifamily Housing	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	1,857 tons Highest 25%
Letterman Chicago 410 S MORGAN ST	Multifamily Housing	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	1,879 tons Highest 25%
1120 N. LaSalle Apartments 1120 N LaSalle St	Multifamily Housing	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	1,697 tons Highest 28%
550 St. Clair Condominium 550 N St Clair St	Multifamily Housing	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	1,422 tons Highest 33%
Hampton Inn & Suites Chicago - Downtown 33 W Illinois St	Hotel	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	1,332 tons Highest 35%
W Chicago Lakeshore 644 N Lakeshore Dr	Hotel	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	3,162 tons Highest 13%
Renaissance Ohare 8500 W Bryn Mawr Ave	Hotel	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	2,611 tons Highest 16%
St. Xavier University 3700 W 103rd St	College/University	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	3,894 tons Highest 10%
Hyde Park Shopping Center 1500 1554 E 55th St	Strip Mall	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	1,073 tons Highest 42%
Cal-Met Village Apartments 4101 S CALUMET AVE	Multifamily Housing	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	481 tons Lowest 25%
221 E Walton Condominium Association 221 E WALTON PL	Multifamily Housing	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	429 tons Lowest 20%
Astor Terrace 1450 N ASTOR ST	Multifamily Housing	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	561 tons Lowest 32%
234-Senior Suites of Jefferson Park 5400 N NORTHWEST HWY	Senior Living Community	8.3 kg/sqft Highest 24%	499 tons Lowest 27%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data