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Electrify Chicago

According to the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan(opens in a new tab), 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.

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(opens in a new tab). 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.

Property Name / address Primary Property Type Greenhouse Gas Intensity
(kg CO2 eq./sqft)
Total Greenhouse Emissions
(metric tons CO2 eq.)
ONE 333
1333 S WABASH AVE
Multifamily Housing
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
2,263 tons
Highest 45%
1237 W Fullerton Ave
1237 W Fullerton Ave
Multifamily Housing
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
1,876 tons
Lowest 44%
Prairie House at Central Station
1515 S Prairie Ave
Multifamily Housing
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
2,334 tons
Highest 42%
Depaul University Holtschneider Performance Center
(DePaul)
2330 N HALSTED ST
Performing Arts
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
1,571 tons
Lowest 33%
Silver Tower Condominium Association
303 W Ohio St
Multifamily Housing
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
2,422 tons
Highest 40%
Renaissance Chicago O'Hare Suites Hotel
8500 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Hotel
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
2,665 tons
Highest 35%
1111 S. Wabash Condominium Association
1111 S Wabash Ave
Multifamily Housing
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
3,404 tons
Highest 26%
Hotel Sax Chicago
🏆
333 N Dearborn
Hotel
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
1,900 tons
Lowest 45%
Fifth Praire Shores, LLC
2801 S King Dr
Multifamily Housing
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
2,469 tons
Highest 39%
Grand Plaza
🚩
540 N State St
Multifamily Housing
8.5 kg/sqft
Highest 40%
9,525 tons
Highest 7%
181 West Madison
181 W Madison St
Office
8.4 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
9,075 tons
Highest 7%
400 W Superior St
400 W Superior St
Office
8.4 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
1,092 tons
Lowest 7%
Jewel Osco, 03187-119th and Marshfield
11730 S Marshfield Ave
Retail Store
8.4 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
3,814 tons
Highest 23%
600 S Michigan Ave
600 S Michigan Ave
College/University
8.4 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
1,478 tons
Lowest 28%
Dearborn Station
47 W Polk St
Other
8.4 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
1,218 tons
Lowest 15%
Page 35 of 86 (Building #511 to #525)

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data (opens in a new tab)