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.)
Socorro Sandoval Elementary School (CPS) 5534 S St Louis Ave	K-12 School	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	746 tons Lowest 44%
Edison Park Elementary School (CPS) 6220 N Olcott Ave	K-12 School	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	417 tons Lowest 20%
John H Hamline Elementary School (CPS) 4747 S Bishop St	K-12 School	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	552 tons Lowest 31%
Cyrus H McCormick Elementary School (CPS) 2712 S Sawyer Ave	K-12 School	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	692 tons Lowest 41%
Oscar F Mayer Elementary School (CPS) 2250 N Clifton Ave	K-12 School	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	506 tons Lowest 27%
Mark Skinner Elementary School (CPS) 111 S Throop St	K-12 School	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	954 tons Highest 47%
Rufus M Hitch Elementary School (CPS) 5625 N Mcvicker Ave	K-12 School	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	570 tons Lowest 33%
Arthur E Canty Elementary School (CPS) 3740 N Panama Ave	K-12 School	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	715 tons Lowest 42%
Americana Towers Condominium 1636 N Wells St	Multifamily Housing	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	2,445 tons Highest 18%
Lancaster Condo Association 201 N Westshore Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	2,237 tons Highest 19%
2650 N Lakeview Avenue 2650 N Lakeview Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	3,250 tons Highest 12%
Winston Tower 3 Condominium Association 7061 N Kedzie Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	2,760 tons Highest 15%
1300 Lake Shore Drive Condominium Association 1300 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	2,529 tons Highest 17%
1464 S. Michigan 1464 S Michigan Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	1,814 tons Highest 26%
30 E. Adams 30 32 E ADAMS ST	Office	6.9 kg/sqft Highest 42%	1,206 tons Highest 38%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data