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.)
Woodlawn Terrace 4724 4730 S WOODLAWN AVE	Multifamily Housing	6.5 kg/sqft Highest 49%	381 tons Lowest 16%
The Wrigley Building 410 N MICHIGAN AVE	Office	6.5 kg/sqft Highest 49%	4,037 tons Highest 9%
Randolph Wells 205 W Randolph St	Office	6.5 kg/sqft Highest 49%	1,299 tons Highest 36%
200 West Monroe 200 W Monroe	Office	6.5 kg/sqft Highest 49%	4,583 tons Highest 8%
Renelle on the River 403 N Wabash	Multifamily Housing	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 49%	864 tons Lowest 50%
MRR 619 S LaSalle LLC 619 S LaSalle	Multifamily Housing	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 49%	608 tons Lowest 35%
1117-37 W Monroe 1117-1137 W Monroe	Multifamily Housing	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 49%	384 tons Lowest 16%
The Van Buren _CO (th202) 808 W Van Buren	Multifamily Housing	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 49%	748 tons Lowest 44%
MiCA 2733 W BELDEN AVE	Multifamily Housing	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 49%	1,320 tons Highest 35%
247-Senior Suites of Norwood Park 5700 North Harlem Avenue	Senior Living Community	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 49%	596 tons Lowest 35%
7150 Cyril Court Apartments 7150 S Cyril Ct	Multifamily Housing	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 49%	473 tons Lowest 25%
Lavergne Court Apts. 4938 W Quincy St	Multifamily Housing	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 49%	919 tons Highest 48%
Social Science Research Building 1126 E 59th St	College/University	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 49%	452 tons Lowest 22%
James B McPherson Elementary School (CPS) 4728 N Wolcott Ave	K-12 School	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 49%	998 tons Highest 45%
Edward Beasley Elementary Magnet Academic Center (CPS) 5235 S State St	K-12 School	6.4 kg/sqft Lowest 49%	996 tons Highest 45%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data