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.) |
---|---|---|---|
340 West Superior Condominium Association
340 W Superior St
| Multifamily Housing | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 1,506 tons
Lowest 30%
|
Manley Career Academy HS -CPS
2935 W Polk St
| K-12 School | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 1,137 tons
Lowest 10%
|
Sixty Thirty Condominium Association
6030 N Sheridan Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 1,554 tons
Lowest 32%
|
Chicago Residential Inc.
2440 N Lakeview Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 1,329 tons
Lowest 21%
|
2970 N SHERIDAN RD
2970 N SHERIDAN RD
| Multifamily Housing | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 1,303 tons
Lowest 20%
|
New Englewood Terrace Apartments
6425 S Lowe
| Multifamily Housing | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 1,718 tons
Lowest 39%
|
Sullivan Center
1 S State St
| Office | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 5,142 tons
Highest 15%
|
680 North Lake Shore Drive
680 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 8,773 tons
Highest 8%
|
200 West Adams St.
200 W Adams St
| Office | 5.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 10%
| 4,084 tons
Highest 20%
|
North Harbor Tower
175 N Harbor Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 5.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 10%
| 2,982 tons
Highest 31%
|
400 W Ontario St
400 W Ontario St
| Multifamily Housing | 5.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 10%
| 1,177 tons
Lowest 13%
|
933 Van Buren Condominium Association
933 W Van Buren St
| Multifamily Housing | 5.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 10%
| 1,573 tons
Lowest 33%
|
Moment Chicago
545 McClurg Ct
| Multifamily Housing | 5.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 10%
| 3,780 tons
Highest 23%
|
Optima Chicago Center
200 E Illinios St
| Multifamily Housing | 5.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 10%
| 2,959 tons
Highest 31%
|
347 W Chestnut St
347 W Chestnut St
| Multifamily Housing | 5.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 10%
| 2,152 tons
Highest 47%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data