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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Goode HS -CPS
7651 S Homan Ave
| K-12 School | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 1,545 tons
Lowest 32%
|
Mercy Circle
3659 W 99TH ST
| Residential Care Facility | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 1,091 tons
Lowest 6%
|
Sheridan Plaza Apartments
4601 4613 N SHERIDAN RD
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 1,143 tons
Lowest 10%
|
Arturo Velasquez Institute
2800 S Western Ave
| College/University | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 1,300 tons
Lowest 19%
|
Circa 922
922 W Washington Blvd
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 1,161 tons
Lowest 12%
|
Lloyd Elementary -CPS
2103 N Lamon Ave
| K-12 School | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 1,114 tons
Lowest 8%
|
Ariel Elemenentary-CPS
1119 E 46th St
| K-12 School | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 1,087 tons
Lowest 6%
|
Hampton Inn and Suites Chicago
33 W Illinois St
| Hotel | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 1,181 tons
Lowest 14%
|
The Guild Condo
50 E 16th St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 1,678 tons
Lowest 37%
|
Hilliard Homes Phase I Limited Partnership
2031 S Clark St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 1,281 tons
Lowest 19%
|
55 W Wacker Dr
55 W Wacker Dr
| Office | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 2,063 tons
Lowest 50%
|
4827 N SHERIDAN RD
4827 N SHERIDAN RD
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 1,207 tons
Lowest 15%
|
Erie on the Park Condominium Association
510 W Erie St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 1,453 tons
Lowest 27%
|
Lancaster Condo Association
201 N Westshore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 2,378 tons
Highest 41%
|
1010 Lake Shore Association
1010 N Lake Shore Drive
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 2,967 tons
Highest 31%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data