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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.)
Whole Foods KBS
🚩
1550 N Kingsbury St
Supermarket/Grocery Store
35.2 kg/sqft
#16 Highest
3,501 tons
Highest 11%
8794
🚩
(Northwestern)
320 E Superior Street
Laboratory
33.9 kg/sqft
#17 Highest
6,325 tons
Highest 5%
Pete's 118th
🚩
3454 - 3620 E 118th St
Supermarket/Grocery Store
32.4 kg/sqft
#18 Highest
1,752 tons
Highest 27%
Accelerator Building
🚩 πŸ“·
(UChicago)
5604 - 5620 S Ellis Ave
Laboratory
31.8 kg/sqft
#19 Highest
1,869 tons
Highest 25%
John T. Rettaliata Engineering Center
🚩
(Illinois Tech)
10 W 32nd Street
College/University
31.4 kg/sqft
#20 Highest
4,204 tons
Highest 9%
Cubs Office Building
🚩
1101 W WAVELAND AVE
Office
30.9 kg/sqft
#21 Highest
7,649 tons
Highest 4%
53100512--CHICAGO
🚩
1615 S Clark St
Supermarket/Grocery Store
30.7 kg/sqft
#22 Highest
1,899 tons
Highest 24%
Hinds Laboratory
🚩 πŸ“·
(UChicago)
5734 S Ellis Ave
Laboratory
30.4 kg/sqft
#24 Highest
3,998 tons
Highest 9%
Whole Foods EWR
🚩
6009 N BROADWAY
Supermarket/Grocery Store
30.4 kg/sqft
#24 Highest
1,719 tons
Highest 28%
Pete's Madison
🚩
2333 W Madison
Supermarket/Grocery Store
30.3 kg/sqft
#25 Highest
1,997 tons
Highest 23%
Pete's Cermak
🚩
2526 W Cermak Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
30.0 kg/sqft
#26 Highest
2,219 tons
Highest 20%
8846
🚩
(Northwestern)
303 E Superior Street
Laboratory
29.6 kg/sqft
#27 Highest
12,415 tons
#47 Highest
2430 N Halsted
🚩
2430 N Halsted St
Laboratory
29.2 kg/sqft
#28 Highest
3,659 tons
Highest 10%
53100507--CHICAGO
🚩
5353 N Elston Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
29.1 kg/sqft
#29 Highest
1,836 tons
Highest 25%
04500- Chicago, IL
🚩
1340 S CANAL ST
Supermarket/Grocery Store
28.6 kg/sqft
#30 Highest
2,045 tons
Highest 22%
Page 2 of 171 (Building #16 to #30)

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