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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Edith Spurlock Sampson Apts
2720 N Sheffield Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 11.4 kg/sqft
Highest 22%
| 1,784 tons
Lowest 42%
|
Bryn Mawr
5550 N Kenmore Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 11.4 kg/sqft
Highest 22%
| 1,775 tons
Lowest 41%
|
500 N Michigan
500 N Michigan Ave
| Office | 11.3 kg/sqft
Highest 22%
| 4,402 tons
Highest 19%
|
Madison 123 Assoc LLC
🏆
119 - 123 Madison St
| Office | 11.3 kg/sqft
Highest 22%
| 1,020 tons
#24 Lowest in Chicago*
|
Aviation Administration Building
10510 W Zemke Rd
| Office | 11.3 kg/sqft
Highest 22%
| 1,875 tons
Lowest 44%
|
Gateway Chandler
2555 N Clark St
| Multifamily Housing | 11.3 kg/sqft
Highest 22%
| 1,704 tons
Lowest 38%
|
Dana Hotel & Spa
660 N State St
| Hotel | 11.2 kg/sqft
Highest 23%
| 1,330 tons
Lowest 21%
|
Courtyard Marriot
30 E Hubbard St
| Hotel | 11.2 kg/sqft
Highest 23%
| 2,268 tons
Highest 44%
|
200 West Partners Limited Partnership
330 S Wells St
| Multifamily Housing | 11.2 kg/sqft
Highest 23%
| 1,092 tons
Lowest 7%
|
Johnson Center for Science and Community Life
5141 N Christiana Ave
| College/University | 11.2 kg/sqft
Highest 23%
| 1,132 tons
Lowest 9%
|
645 N Michigan Ave
645 N Michigan Ave
| Office | 11.2 kg/sqft
Highest 23%
| 2,409 tons
Highest 40%
|
Prosser Career Acad HS -CPS
2148 N Long Ave
| K-12 School | 11.2 kg/sqft
Highest 23%
| 2,346 tons
Highest 42%
|
The Hoxton
200 N Green St
| Hotel | 11.2 kg/sqft
Highest 23%
| 1,708 tons
Lowest 38%
|
Park Newberry Condominiums
55 W Delaware Pl
| Multifamily Housing | 11.2 kg/sqft
Highest 23%
| 2,917 tons
Highest 32%
|
939 North Avenue Collection,LLC
913 949 W North Ave
| Mixed Use Property | 11.1 kg/sqft
Highest 24%
| 2,440 tons
Highest 40%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data