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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.)
Shoreland Apartments
πŸ†
5454 S Shore Dr
Multifamily Housing
3.5 kg/sqft
#11 Lowest in Chicago*
2,231 tons
Highest 46%
Saucedo Elementary Academy - CPS
πŸ†
2850 W 24th Blvd
K-12 School
3.4 kg/sqft
#9 Lowest in Chicago*
1,002 tons
#1 Lowest in Chicago*
Park 1500 Lofts
πŸ† πŸ“·
1500 W Monroe St
Multifamily Housing
3.4 kg/sqft
#9 Lowest in Chicago*
1,845 tons
Lowest 43%
Ella Flagg Young Apartments
πŸ†
4645 N Sherdian Rd
Multifamily Housing
3.4 kg/sqft
#9 Lowest in Chicago*
1,029 tons
Lowest 3%
Clinton Complex Condominium Association
πŸ† πŸ“·
500 S Clinton St
Multifamily Housing
3.3 kg/sqft
#6 Lowest in Chicago*
1,101 tons
Lowest 7%
King College Prep -CPS
πŸ† πŸ“·
4445 S Drexel Blvd
K-12 School
3.3 kg/sqft
#6 Lowest in Chicago*
1,031 tons
Lowest 3%
The Monadnock Building
πŸ† πŸ“·
53 W Jackson Blvd
Office
3.0 kg/sqft
#5 Lowest in Chicago*
1,476 tons
Lowest 28%
Marina Towers Condominium Association
πŸ† πŸ“·
300 N State St
Multifamily Housing
2.8 kg/sqft
#4 Lowest in Chicago*
2,167 tons
Highest 46%
State Place Condominium Association
πŸ† πŸ“·
1101 S State St
Multifamily Housing
2.7 kg/sqft
#3 Lowest in Chicago*
1,481 tons
Lowest 28%
200 N COLUMBUS DR
πŸ†
200 N COLUMBUS DR
Hotel
1.9 kg/sqft
#2 Lowest in Chicago*
1,355 tons
Lowest 22%
309-The Breakers at Edgewater Beach
πŸ†
5333 N Sheridan Rd
Senior Living Community
1.8 kg/sqft
#1 Lowest in Chicago*
3,180 tons
Highest 28%
Page 86 of 86 (Building #1276 to #1286)

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