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.)
Winston Towers One 6933 N Kedzie Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 15%	1,846 tons Lowest 43%
One North LaSalle 1 N LaSalle St	Office	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 15%	3,140 tons Highest 29%
Windermere House 1642 E 56th St	Multifamily Housing	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 15%	2,039 tons Lowest 50%
Shoreline Towers CA 6301 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 15%	2,532 tons Highest 38%
71215A State St 101 N State St E	Retail Store	5.7 kg/sqft Lowest 15%	10,414 tons Highest 6%
Two North LaSalle 2 N LaSalle St	Office	5.6 kg/sqft Lowest 14%	4,346 tons Highest 19%
3150 N Sheridan Rd 3150 N Sheridan Rd	Multifamily Housing	5.6 kg/sqft Lowest 14%	1,277 tons Lowest 18%
Wilton U.S. 65 East LLC 65 E Wacker Pl	Office	5.6 kg/sqft Lowest 14%	1,397 tons Lowest 24%
Warwick Allerton Hotel Chicago 136 148 E Huron St	Hotel	5.6 kg/sqft Lowest 14%	1,691 tons Lowest 37%
33 N Dearborn 33 N Dearborn St	Office	5.6 kg/sqft Lowest 14%	2,081 tons Highest 49%
The Columbian Condominium Association 1160 S Michigan Ave	Multifamily Housing	5.6 kg/sqft Lowest 14%	2,591 tons Highest 37%
Coast at Lakeshore East 345 E Wacker Dr	Multifamily Housing	5.6 kg/sqft Lowest 14%	3,230 tons Highest 28%
Alta at K Station 555 W Kinzie St	Multifamily Housing	5.6 kg/sqft Lowest 14%	5,171 tons Highest 15%
2480 N MILWAUKEE AVE 2480 N MILWAUKEE AVE	Multifamily Housing	5.5 kg/sqft Lowest 13%	1,578 tons Lowest 33%
1212 N. Wells CA 🏆 1212 N Wells St	Multifamily Housing	5.5 kg/sqft Lowest 13%	1,006 tons #3 Lowest in Chicago*

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data