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.)
West Ridge Elementary School (CPS) 6700 N Whipple St	K-12 School	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	740 tons Lowest 43%
1100 N. Dearborn 1100 N Dearborn St	Multifamily Housing	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	1,324 tons Highest 35%
40 E. Oak 40 E Oak St	Multifamily Housing	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	1,134 tons Highest 40%
The Heritage at Millennium Park 130 N Garland Ct	Multifamily Housing	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	6,888 tons Highest 4%
990 North Lake Shore Drive 990 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	2,203 tons Highest 20%
Hollywood Towers Condo Association 5701 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	4,151 tons Highest 9%
Waterford Condominium 4170 N Marine Dr	Multifamily Housing	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	2,472 tons Highest 17%
Hotel Blake 500 S DEARBORN ST	Hotel	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	1,114 tons Highest 41%
7219 N Sheridan Rd 7219 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	393 tons Lowest 17%
41-51 N Central Ave 51 N CENTRAL AVE	Multifamily Housing	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	407 tons Lowest 19%
1055 W Granville 1055 1065 W GRANVILLE AVE	Multifamily Housing	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	600 tons Lowest 35%
Adler Planetarium 1300 S Lake Shore Dr	Museum	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	1,301 tons Highest 36%
7447 South Shore LLC 7447 S South Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	2,467 tons Highest 17%
440 North Wells Street 440 N Wells St	Office	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	834 tons Lowest 48%
Lake Grove Village Apartments 3500 S LAKE PARK AVE	Multifamily Housing	7.4 kg/sqft Highest 35%	3,452 tons Highest 11%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data