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.)
Lafayette Plaza Housing Cooperative 50 W 71st St	Multifamily Housing	7.4 kg/sqft Lowest 45%	1,648 tons Lowest 35%
33 N LaSalle St 33 N LaSalle St	Office	7.4 kg/sqft Lowest 45%	3,539 tons Highest 25%
Lake View Towers Apartments 4550 N Clarendon Ave	Multifamily Housing	7.4 kg/sqft Lowest 45%	3,331 tons Highest 27%
33738-Chicago Marriott Downtown 540 N Michigan Ave	Hotel	7.4 kg/sqft Lowest 45%	7,049 tons Highest 10%
200 West Monroe 200 W Monroe	Office	7.3 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	5,116 tons Highest 15%
899 South Plymouth Court Condominium Association 899 S Plymouth Ct	Multifamily Housing	7.3 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	1,935 tons Lowest 46%
AMLI 900 900 S Clark St	Multifamily Housing	7.3 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	3,522 tons Highest 25%
Northwest Tower Apartments 🏆 1170 W Erie St	Multifamily Housing	7.3 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	1,022 tons #25 Lowest in Chicago*
Northwest Armory 1551 N Kedzie Ave	Other	7.3 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	1,500 tons Lowest 29%
Residence at RiverBend Condominium Association 333 N Canal St	Multifamily Housing	7.3 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	3,600 tons Highest 24%
77 West Huron Street 77 W Huron St	Multifamily Housing	7.3 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	2,283 tons Highest 44%
1100 N Dearborn St 1100 N Dearborn St	Multifamily Housing	7.3 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	1,313 tons Lowest 20%
SpringHill Suites - Residence Inn 400 410 N Dearborn St	Hotel	7.3 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	2,681 tons Highest 35%
332 Property LLC 332 S Michigan Ave	Office	7.3 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	3,848 tons Highest 22%
Congress Plaza Hotel 520 S Michigan Ave	Hotel	7.3 kg/sqft Lowest 43%	4,372 tons Highest 19%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data