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.)
Chicago Transit Authority 567 W Lake St	Office	7.7 kg/sqft Lowest 50%	3,327 tons Highest 27%
1025 W Addison St 1025 W Addison St	Multifamily Housing	7.7 kg/sqft Lowest 50%	2,001 tons Lowest 49%
Holy Name Cathedral Parish 735 N State St	Other	7.7 kg/sqft Lowest 50%	1,488 tons Lowest 29%
Wyndham Grand Chicago Riverfront 71 E Wacker Dr	Hotel	7.7 kg/sqft Lowest 50%	1,932 tons Lowest 46%
601 E 32ND ST 601 E 32ND ST	Multifamily Housing	7.7 kg/sqft Lowest 50%	1,461 tons Lowest 27%
Astor House 1340 N Astor St	Multifamily Housing	7.7 kg/sqft Lowest 50%	1,583 tons Lowest 33%
McDonald's Headquarters 110 N Carpenter	Office	7.7 kg/sqft Lowest 50%	4,952 tons Highest 16%
Two River Place 720 N Larrabee St	Multifamily Housing	7.7 kg/sqft Lowest 50%	2,000 tons Lowest 49%
The Patricians 401 411 W FULLERTON PKWY	Multifamily Housing	7.7 kg/sqft Lowest 50%	1,462 tons Lowest 27%
(IL278)-2000 N. Lincoln Park West 2000 - 2052 N Lincoln Park West	Multifamily Housing	7.7 kg/sqft Lowest 50%	2,029 tons Lowest 50%
Elm Street Plaza 1130 N Dearborn St	Multifamily Housing	7.7 kg/sqft Lowest 50%	2,934 tons Highest 32%
Hollywood Towers Condo Association 5701 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	7.7 kg/sqft Lowest 50%	4,349 tons Highest 19%
135 S LaSalle Property LLC 🚩 135 S LaSalle St	Office	7.7 kg/sqft Lowest 50%	11,970 tons Highest 5%
191 N Wacker 191 N Wacker Dr	Office	7.6 kg/sqft Lowest 48%	5,903 tons Highest 12%
O'Hare Plaza II 8755 W HIGGINS RD	Office	7.6 kg/sqft Lowest 48%	1,942 tons Lowest 46%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data