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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.)
Jewel Osco, 03181-87th & State St
🚩
87 W 87th St
Supermarket/Grocery Store
30.3 kg/sqft
#31 Highest
2,120 tons
Highest 48%
Washington Square-North and Cicero Development LLC
🚩
4821 - 4951 W North Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
30.0 kg/sqft
#32 Highest
1,742 tons
Lowest 40%
Jewel at South Loop Marketplace
🚩
1340 S CANAL ST
Supermarket/Grocery Store
29.7 kg/sqft
#33 Highest
2,121 tons
Highest 48%
Pete's Kedgie
🚩
4700 S Kedzie Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
29.3 kg/sqft
#35 Highest
1,585 tons
Lowest 33%
03262-Irving Park & Cicero
🚩
4660 W Irving Park Rd
Supermarket/Grocery Store
29.3 kg/sqft
#35 Highest
2,074 tons
Lowest 50%
Jewel Osco, 03176-Ashland & 95th St
🚩
9400 S Ashland Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
29.3 kg/sqft
#35 Highest
1,946 tons
Lowest 46%
Whole Foods
🚩
3201 N ASHLAND AVE
Supermarket/Grocery Store
28.9 kg/sqft
#37 Highest
2,376 tons
Highest 41%
Jewel Osco, 03344-Roosevelt & Ashland
🚩
1220 S Ashland Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
28.8 kg/sqft
#38 Highest
1,828 tons
Lowest 43%
Mariano's
🚩
3857 S DR MARTIN L KING JR DR
Supermarket/Grocery Store
28.6 kg/sqft
#39 Highest
2,066 tons
Lowest 50%
Jewel Osco, 03501-Western & Roscoe
🚩
3400 N Western Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
28.4 kg/sqft
#40 Highest
1,578 tons
Lowest 33%
Jewel Osco, 02508-Howard & Clark
🚩
1763 W Howard St
Supermarket/Grocery Store
28.3 kg/sqft
#42 Highest
1,986 tons
Lowest 48%
Stroger Hospital Campus
🚨
1901 W Harrison St
Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)
28.3 kg/sqft
#42 Highest
45,230 tons
#7 Highest
Jewel Osco, 03721-Archer & Austin
🚩
6107 S Archer Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
28.2 kg/sqft
#43 Highest
1,413 tons
Lowest 25%
Jewel Osco, 03170-Pulaski & 55th St
🚩
5320 S Pulaski Rd
Supermarket/Grocery Store
27.7 kg/sqft
#44 Highest
1,995 tons
Lowest 48%
03241-Paulina & Division
🚩
1341 N Paulina St
Supermarket/Grocery Store
27.3 kg/sqft
#46 Highest
1,430 tons
Lowest 26%
Page 3 of 86 (Building #31 to #45)

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