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.)
500 W. Belmont Apartments 500 W BELMONT AVE	Multifamily Housing	6.1 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	333 tons Lowest 12%
180 North LaSalle 180 N LaSalle St	Office	6.1 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	5,218 tons Highest 7%
199 East Lake Shore Drive 199 E LAKE SHORE DR	Multifamily Housing	6.1 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	381 tons Lowest 16%
Walsh Park Apartments 1734 N PAULINA ST	Multifamily Housing	6.1 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	582 tons Lowest 34%
Drexel Grand 5220 S DREXEL AVE	Multifamily Housing	6.1 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	322 tons Lowest 11%
10 South Riverside Plaza 10 S Riverside Plz	Office	6.1 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	4,802 tons Highest 7%
Triangle Plaza 8750 W Bryn Mawr Ave	Office	6.1 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	4,669 tons Highest 8%
2300 N Commonwealth 2300 2320 N COMMONWEALTH AVE	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 41%	337 tons Lowest 12%
Montclare Senior Residences of Calumet Heights 9401 S STONY ISLAND AVE	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 41%	782 tons Lowest 46%
The Oliver on LaSalle - lv048 1140 N La Salle Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 41%	546 tons Lowest 31%
465 North Park 465 N Park Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 41%	3,213 tons Highest 12%
G&A Senior Residence at Kedzie 4054 N KEDZIE AVE	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 41%	301 tons Lowest 9%
Astor Villa Condominium Association 1430 N Astor St	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 41%	663 tons Lowest 39%
Adam Clayton Powell Paideia Community Academy ES (CPS) 7511 S South Shore Dr	K-12 School	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 41%	685 tons Lowest 40%
Ainslie Park Condominium Association 840 846 W Ainslie St	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 41%	319 tons Lowest 11%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data