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Electrify Chicago

According to the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan(opens in a new tab), 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.

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(opens in a new tab). According to the City โ€œAs of 2016, this list includes all commercial, institutional, and residential buildings larger than 50,000 square feet.โ€ 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.

Property Name / address Primary Property Type Greenhouse Gas Intensity
(kg CO2 eq./sqft)
Total Greenhouse Emissions
(metric tons CO2 eq.)
Presence Resurrection Medical Center
๐Ÿšจ
7435 W Talcott Ave
Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)
20.9 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
22,882 tons
#13 Highest
U.S. Cellular Plaza - 8410 _ Goby LLC
๐Ÿ†
8410 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Office
20.7 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
4,410 tons
Highest 19%
The Art Institute of Chicago
๐Ÿšจ ๐Ÿ“ท
111 S Michigan Ave
Museum
20.7 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
20,891 tons
#19 Highest
Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush
1611 W HARRISON ST
Medical Office
20.6 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
3,105 tons
Highest 29%
NMH Feinberg Pavilion and Galter Pavilion
๐Ÿšจ
251 E Huron St
Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)
20.6 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
45,388 tons
#6 Highest
1500 N Clybourn Ave
1500 N Clybourn Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
20.4 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
1,706 tons
Lowest 38%
Bria of Forest Edge
8001 S Western Ave
Senior Living Community
20.4 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
1,486 tons
Lowest 29%
Physics Research Center
๐Ÿ†
933 E 56th Street
Laboratory
20.2 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
1,355 tons
Lowest 22%
The James Hotel
55 E Ontario St
Hotel
20.2 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
1,456 tons
Lowest 27%
Shriners Hospital for Children-Chicago
2211 N Oak Park Ave
Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)
20.1 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
3,951 tons
Highest 22%
Chicago Board Options Exchange
400 S LaSalle St
Financial Office
20.0 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
6,968 tons
Highest 10%
Clark Manor Convalescent Center
7427 7433 N CLARK ST
Senior Living Community
20.0 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
1,175 tons
Lowest 13%
Advocate Trinity Hospital
2320 E 93rd St
Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)
19.8 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
7,259 tons
Highest 9%
Page Building
๐Ÿ†
177 N State St
Office
19.7 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
1,043 tons
Lowest 4%
1050 W Sheridan
1050 W Sheridan
Other - Education
19.7 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
2,747 tons
Highest 34%
Page 8 of 86 (Building #106 to #120)

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data (opens in a new tab)