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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Winston Towers One
6933 N Kedzie Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 5.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 15%
| 1,846 tons
Lowest 43%
|
One North LaSalle
1 N LaSalle St
| Office | 5.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 15%
| 3,140 tons
Highest 29%
|
Windermere House
1642 E 56th St
| Multifamily Housing | 5.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 15%
| 2,039 tons
Lowest 50%
|
Shoreline Towers CA
6301 N Sheridan Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 5.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 15%
| 2,532 tons
Highest 38%
|
71215A State St
101 N State St E
| Retail Store | 5.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 15%
| 10,414 tons
Highest 6%
|
Two North LaSalle
2 N LaSalle St
| Office | 5.6 kg/sqft
Lowest 14%
| 4,346 tons
Highest 19%
|
3150 N Sheridan Rd
3150 N Sheridan Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 5.6 kg/sqft
Lowest 14%
| 1,277 tons
Lowest 18%
|
Wilton U.S. 65 East LLC
65 E Wacker Pl
| Office | 5.6 kg/sqft
Lowest 14%
| 1,397 tons
Lowest 24%
|
Warwick Allerton Hotel Chicago
136 148 E Huron St
| Hotel | 5.6 kg/sqft
Lowest 14%
| 1,691 tons
Lowest 37%
|
33 N Dearborn
33 N Dearborn St
| Office | 5.6 kg/sqft
Lowest 14%
| 2,081 tons
Highest 49%
|
The Columbian Condominium Association
1160 S Michigan Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 5.6 kg/sqft
Lowest 14%
| 2,591 tons
Highest 37%
|
Coast at Lakeshore East
345 E Wacker Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 5.6 kg/sqft
Lowest 14%
| 3,230 tons
Highest 28%
|
Alta at K Station
555 W Kinzie St
| Multifamily Housing | 5.6 kg/sqft
Lowest 14%
| 5,171 tons
Highest 15%
|
2480 N MILWAUKEE AVE
2480 N MILWAUKEE AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 5.5 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 1,578 tons
Lowest 33%
|
1212 N. Wells CA
🏆
1212 N Wells St
| Multifamily Housing | 5.5 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 1,006 tons
#3 Lowest in Chicago*
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data