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.)
The Monroe Building 104 S Michigan Ave	Office	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	1,718 tons Lowest 39%
Catalyst 123 N Desplaines St	Multifamily Housing	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	1,812 tons Lowest 42%
Mather HS -CPS 5835 N Lincoln Ave	K-12 School	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	1,318 tons Lowest 20%
1140 S Wabash Ave 1140 S Wabash Ave	Multifamily Housing	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	2,101 tons Highest 48%
111 E Chestnut Condominium Association 111 E Chestnut St	Multifamily Housing	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	4,176 tons Highest 20%
(IL279) - 212 W Washington Condo 212 W Washington St	Multifamily Housing	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	1,964 tons Lowest 47%
Beach Point Tower Condominium Association 5801 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	1,131 tons Lowest 9%
833 W BUENA AVE 833 W BUENA AVE	Multifamily Housing	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	1,317 tons Lowest 20%
6200-42 N Hoyne Ave 🏆 6200-42 N Hoyne Ave	Multifamily Housing	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	1,172 tons Lowest 13%
Mary Hartwell Catherwood Apts 3920 - 3940 N Clark St	Multifamily Housing	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	1,713 tons Lowest 38%
360 N Michigan Ave 360 N Michigan Ave	Hotel	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	2,790 tons Highest 33%
4640 N SHERIDAN RD 4640 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	1,539 tons Lowest 31%
1300 Lake Shore Drive Condominium Association 1300 N Lake Shore Dr	Multifamily Housing	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	2,586 tons Highest 37%
535 North Michigan 535 N Michigan Ave	Multifamily Housing	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	3,180 tons Highest 28%
Adler Place 1629 S Prairie Ave	Multifamily Housing	7.1 kg/sqft Lowest 40%	2,718 tons Highest 34%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data