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 “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.
Property Name / address | Primary Property Type |
Greenhouse Gas Intensity (kg CO2 eq./sqft) |
Total Greenhouse Emissions (metric tons CO2 eq.) |
---|---|---|---|
CHICAGO PETERSON AVE (2079)
2112 W Peterson Ave
| Retail Store | 9.1 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 1,461 tons
Highest 32%
|
6118 Sheridan Road Condominium Homeowners Association
6118 N SHERIDAN RD
| Multifamily Housing | 9.1 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 928 tons
Highest 48%
|
190 South LaSalle
190 S LaSalle St
| Office | 9.1 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 8,022 tons
Highest 4%
|
Harris Bank Building
🚩
115 S LaSalle St
| Office | 9.1 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 13,824 tons #38 Highest
|
Algonquin #1
1605 E 50TH ST
| Multifamily Housing | 9.1 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 539 tons
Lowest 30%
|
412 N Wells
412 N Wells St
| Office | 9.0 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
| 462 tons
Lowest 23%
|
504 N. Green St.
504 N GREEN ST
| Multifamily Housing | 9.0 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
| 1,129 tons
Highest 41%
|
North-Grand High School
(CPS)
4330 W Wabansia Ave
| K-12 School | 9.0 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
| 1,847 tons
Highest 25%
|
Horace Greeley Elementary School
(CPS)
832 W Sheridan Rd
| K-12 School | 9.0 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
| 545 tons
Lowest 31%
|
101 Grand
101 W Grand Ave
| Office | 9.0 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
| 558 tons
Lowest 32%
|
Joseph Brennemann Elementary School
(CPS)
4251 N Clarendon Ave
| K-12 School | 9.0 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
| 482 tons
Lowest 25%
|
Winston Towers No. 4 Association
7033 N KEDZIE AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 9.0 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
| 2,923 tons
Highest 14%
|
Dearborn Elm Condominium Association
1155 N DEARBORN ST
| Multifamily Housing | 9.0 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
| 994 tons
Highest 45%
|
Bernard Horwich JCC
3003 3033 W TOUHY AVE
| Mixed Use Property | 9.0 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
| 1,494 tons
Highest 31%
|
208 S La Salle Whole Building
208 S LaSalle St
| Hotel | 9.0 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
| 8,155 tons
Highest 4%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data