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 Pierre Condominium 2100 N Lincoln Park West	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,140 tons Lowest 10%
The Caravel 635 N Dearborn St	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,266 tons Lowest 18%
525 Hawthorne Place Condominium Association 525 W Hawthorne Pl	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,645 tons Lowest 35%
720 W. Gordon Terrace CA 720 W Gordon Ter	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,736 tons Lowest 40%
One Place Condominium Association 1 E 8th St	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,863 tons Lowest 44%
Daley 7500 S Pulaski Ave	College/University	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	2,999 tons Highest 30%
Lidia Puchinska Apartments 838 N Noble St	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	1,624 tons Lowest 34%
777 North Michigan Condo Association 777 N Michigan Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	2,346 tons Highest 42%
Museum Pointe CA 233 E 13th St	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	2,423 tons Highest 40%
250 270 Pearson 250 270 E Pearson St	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	3,702 tons Highest 24%
Metropolitan Tower Condo Association 310 S Michigan Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	3,486 tons Highest 25%
180 N LaSalle St 180 N LaSalle St	Office	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	5,125 tons Highest 15%
The Chandler at Lakeshore East 450 E Waterside Dr	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	2,538 tons Highest 38%
Lake Park Plaza Condominium Association 3930 N Pine Grove Ave	Multifamily Housing	6.0 kg/sqft Lowest 19%	3,100 tons Highest 29%
IL0303ZZ - Metcalf Federal Bldg 77 W Jackson	Office	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	4,863 tons Highest 16%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data