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.

Chicago Buildings by Greenhouse Gas Intensity

Note: Data only includes large Chicago buildings from 2020

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 2020, 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.)
Walmart Supercenter #5781 8331 S Stewart Ave	Wholesale Club/Supercenter	13.3 kg/sqft Highest 16%	1,971 tons Lowest 47%
Farragut Career Academy HS -CPS 2345 S Christiana Ave	K-12 School	13.3 kg/sqft Highest 16%	4,781 tons Highest 17%
Presence Center for Advanced Care 331 W Surf St	Medical Office	13.3 kg/sqft Highest 16%	3,198 tons Highest 28%
John T. Rettaliata Engineering Center 🏆 (Illinois Tech) 10 W 32nd Street	College/University	13.2 kg/sqft Highest 17%	1,773 tons Lowest 41%
CICS ChicagoQuest School and The Noble Academy 1409 - 1443 N Ogden Ave	K-12 School	13.2 kg/sqft Highest 17%	1,201 tons Lowest 15%
Axis Apartments & Lofts 441 E Erie St	Multifamily Housing	13.2 kg/sqft Highest 17%	7,538 tons Highest 9%
The Private Residences at Ontario Place Condominiu 10 E Ontario St	Multifamily Housing	13.2 kg/sqft Highest 17%	6,478 tons Highest 11%
Hyde Park Tower 5140 S Hyde Park Blvd	Multifamily Housing	13.2 kg/sqft Highest 17%	1,893 tons Lowest 45%
The Bridgeport Condominiums 3434 3464 S HALSTED ST	Multifamily Housing	13.1 kg/sqft Highest 17%	1,284 tons Lowest 19%
919 S California Ave 919 S California Ave	Other	13.0 kg/sqft Highest 17%	1,103 tons Lowest 8%
Julian HS -CPS 10330 S Elizabeth St	K-12 School	12.9 kg/sqft Highest 17%	3,441 tons Highest 26%
Millennium Park Plaza 151 - 155 N Michigan Ave	Multifamily Housing	12.9 kg/sqft Highest 17%	7,876 tons Highest 8%
The Clare 55 E Pearson St	Multifamily Housing	12.9 kg/sqft Highest 17%	8,121 tons Highest 8%
Bell Federal Building 79 W Monroe St	Office	12.8 kg/sqft Highest 18%	2,551 tons Highest 37%
Friedman Properties, Ltd 420 N Wabash Ave	Office	12.8 kg/sqft Highest 18%	1,309 tons Lowest 20%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data