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.)
175 W Jackson 175 W Jackson	Office	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	10,690 tons Highest 6%
James Kilmer Condo Association 1560 N Sandburg Ter	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	4,405 tons Highest 19%
(IL526)-Carl Sandburg Village 1355 N Sandburg Ter	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	4,249 tons Highest 20%
The 400 Condominium Association 400 E Randolph St	Multifamily Housing	5.9 kg/sqft Lowest 18%	6,600 tons Highest 11%
222 N LaSalle St 222 N LaSalle St	Office	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 16%	7,027 tons Highest 10%
Malibu Condominium 6007 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 16%	2,954 tons Highest 31%
5901 N SHERIDAN RD 5901 N SHERIDAN RD	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 16%	1,412 tons Lowest 24%
AMLI Lofts Polk 111 W Polk St	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 16%	1,176 tons Lowest 13%
EMME 165 N Desplaines St	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 16%	1,142 tons Lowest 10%
LaSalle Private Residences 1212 N LaSalle St	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 16%	2,149 tons Highest 47%
Lewis Towers 820 N Michigan Ave	Office	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 16%	1,262 tons Lowest 17%
EnV Chicago 161 W Kinzie St	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 16%	2,285 tons Highest 44%
1301 N DEARBORN ST 1301 N DEARBORN ST	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 16%	1,336 tons Lowest 21%
Michael A. Bilandic Building 160 N LaSalle St	Office	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 16%	2,705 tons Highest 35%
1001 South State 1001 S STATE ST	Multifamily Housing	5.8 kg/sqft Lowest 16%	2,958 tons Highest 31%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data