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 2021, 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.) |
---|---|---|---|
625 West Adams
625 W Adams St
| Office | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 2,079 tons
Highest 22%
|
Optima Signature
220 E Illinois St
| Multifamily Housing | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 3,777 tons
Highest 10%
|
Glenmoor Manor
1041 1051 W Glenlake Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 235 tons
Lowest 4%
|
Klee Plaza at Six Corners Condominium
4015 N Milwaukee Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 405 tons
Lowest 18%
|
Peterson Lofts Condominium Association
523 S Plymouth Ct
| Multifamily Housing | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 355 tons
Lowest 13%
|
114 South Racine
114 S Racine Ave
| Office | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 405 tons
Lowest 18%
|
Myra Bradwell Communications Arts & Sciences ES
7726 S Burnham
| K-12 School | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 623 tons
Lowest 37%
|
Adlai E Stevenson Elementary School
8010 S Kostner Ave
| K-12 School | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 545 tons
Lowest 31%
|
Charles P Steinmetz College Preparatory HS
3030 N Mobile Ave
| K-12 School | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 1,694 tons
Highest 28%
|
680 North Lake Shore Drive
680 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 7,167 tons
Highest 4%
|
Superior At LaSalle Condominium Assoc
150 W SUPERIOR ST
| Multifamily Housing | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 772 tons
Lowest 45%
|
422 West Melrose
422 424 W MELROSE ST
| Multifamily Housing | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 705 tons
Lowest 41%
|
Bishop Plaza, LLC
1422 1424 W 47TH ST
| Strip Mall | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 316 tons
Lowest 11%
|
Aston -CO (pt64)
200 E Illinios St
| Multifamily Housing | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 2,447 tons
Highest 18%
|
3500 N Lake Shore
3500 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 4.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 13%
| 896 tons
Highest 49%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data