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.)
Autumn Green at Midway Village 6700 S KEATING AVE	Senior Living Community	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	755 tons Lowest 44%
222 West Hubbard Street 222 W Hubbard St	Office	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	417 tons Lowest 20%
Somerset Place Apartments 5009 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	1,009 tons Highest 45%
Times Square Apartments 869 W BUENA AVE	Multifamily Housing	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	891 tons Highest 49%
The Wyndham 5230 5244 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	1,264 tons Highest 37%
2430 Lake View Avenue Building Corporation 2430 N LAKEVIEW AVE	Multifamily Housing	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	752 tons Lowest 44%
Las Moradas Apartments 1307 1325 N CALIFORNIA AVE	Multifamily Housing	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	411 tons Lowest 19%
St Vincent Depaul 2145 N Halsted St	Pre-school/Daycare	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	905 tons Highest 49%
Lake View Towers 4550 N Clarendon Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	2,862 tons Highest 14%
One11 West Illinois 111 W Illinois St	Office	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	1,511 tons Highest 31%
Sheridan Plaza 4601 4613 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	970 tons Highest 46%
Belmont Apartments 510 W Belmont Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	1,771 tons Highest 27%
The Warwick 1501 N STATE PKWY	Multifamily Housing	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	1,140 tons Highest 40%
2620 Washington Master Tenant, LLC 2620 W WASHINGTON BLVD	Multifamily Housing	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	463 tons Lowest 23%
Kingsbury Orleans LP 350 W Hubbard St	Office	6.3 kg/sqft Lowest 47%	968 tons Highest 46%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data