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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 β€œAs 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.

Property Name / address Primary Property Type Greenhouse Gas Intensity
(kg CO2 eq./sqft)
Total Greenhouse Emissions
(metric tons CO2 eq.)
Fulton-Loomis-Carroll Condominium Association
πŸ†
1400 W FULTON ST
Office
2.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
147 tons
#21 Lowest in Chicago*
Tech Central
3424 S State Street
College/University
2.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
180 tons
Lowest 2%
Hayden/1109 W. Washington
1109 W Washington
Multifamily Housing
2.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
227 tons
Lowest 4%
240 N. Ashland
240 N Ashland Ave
Office
2.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
179 tons
Lowest 2%
Much-Musikantow Co.
πŸ†
8001 - 8007 S Cottage Grove Ave
Other - Public Services
2.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
118 tons
#13 Lowest in Chicago*
Tech South
πŸ†
3450 S State Street
College/University
2.1 kg/sqft
#27 Lowest in Chicago*
170 tons
Lowest 2%
Renaissance Saint Luke
πŸ†
1501 W Belmont Ave
Multifamily Housing
2.1 kg/sqft
#27 Lowest in Chicago*
156 tons
#28 Lowest in Chicago*
Polaris Charter Adademy
πŸ†
(CPS)
620 N Sawyer Ave
K-12 School
2.1 kg/sqft
#27 Lowest in Chicago*
190 tons
Lowest 2%
1000 West Washington Lofts Condo
πŸ†
1000 W Washington Blvd
Multifamily Housing
2.1 kg/sqft
#27 Lowest in Chicago*
694 tons
Lowest 41%
CICERO ANNEX
πŸ†
8101 8141 S CICERO AVE
Strip Mall
2.0 kg/sqft
#24 Lowest in Chicago*
130 tons
#18 Lowest in Chicago*
CA 23
πŸ†
15 23 N ABERDEEN ST
Multifamily Housing
2.0 kg/sqft
#24 Lowest in Chicago*
237 tons
Lowest 5%
540 Surf Building
πŸ†
540 W SURF ST
Multifamily Housing
1.9 kg/sqft
#22 Lowest in Chicago*
120 tons
#15 Lowest in Chicago*
Circle Park
πŸ†
1111 S ASHLAND AVE
Multifamily Housing
1.9 kg/sqft
#22 Lowest in Chicago*
757 tons
Lowest 44%
4611 South Ellis LLC
πŸ†
4611 S ELLIS AVE
Worship Facility
1.7 kg/sqft
#21 Lowest in Chicago*
85 tons
#11 Lowest in Chicago*
Trailhead
πŸ†
1744 N Western Ave
Multifamily Housing
1.6 kg/sqft
#18 Lowest in Chicago*
215 tons
Lowest 3%
Page 169 of 171 (Building #2521 to #2535)

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