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.
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.
Note: This data only includes buildings whose emissions are reported under the Chicago Energy Benchmarking Ordinance. According to the City βAs of 2016, this list includes all commercial, institutional, and residential buildings larger than 50,000 square feet.β 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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Shoreland Apartments
π
5454 S Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 3.5 kg/sqft
#11 Lowest in Chicago*
| 2,231 tons
Highest 46%
|
Saucedo Elementary Academy - CPS
π
2850 W 24th Blvd
| K-12 School | 3.4 kg/sqft
#9 Lowest in Chicago*
| 1,002 tons
#1 Lowest in Chicago*
|
Park 1500 Lofts
π
π·
1500 W Monroe St
| Multifamily Housing | 3.4 kg/sqft
#9 Lowest in Chicago*
| 1,845 tons
Lowest 43%
|
Ella Flagg Young Apartments
π
4645 N Sherdian Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 3.4 kg/sqft
#9 Lowest in Chicago*
| 1,029 tons
Lowest 3%
|
Clinton Complex Condominium Association
π
π·
500 S Clinton St
| Multifamily Housing | 3.3 kg/sqft
#6 Lowest in Chicago*
| 1,101 tons
Lowest 7%
|
King College Prep -CPS
π
π·
4445 S Drexel Blvd
| K-12 School | 3.3 kg/sqft
#6 Lowest in Chicago*
| 1,031 tons
Lowest 3%
|
The Monadnock Building
π
π·
53 W Jackson Blvd
| Office | 3.0 kg/sqft
#5 Lowest in Chicago*
| 1,476 tons
Lowest 28%
|
Marina Towers Condominium Association
π
π·
300 N State St
| Multifamily Housing | 2.8 kg/sqft
#4 Lowest in Chicago*
| 2,167 tons
Highest 46%
|
State Place Condominium Association
π
π·
1101 S State St
| Multifamily Housing | 2.7 kg/sqft
#3 Lowest in Chicago*
| 1,481 tons
Lowest 28%
|
200 N COLUMBUS DR
π
200 N COLUMBUS DR
| Hotel | 1.9 kg/sqft
#2 Lowest in Chicago*
| 1,355 tons
Lowest 22%
|
309-The Breakers at Edgewater Beach
π
5333 N Sheridan Rd
| Senior Living Community | 1.8 kg/sqft
#1 Lowest in Chicago*
| 3,180 tons
Highest 28%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data