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.) |
---|---|---|---|
UIC School of Law
304 S State St
| College/University | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 1,682 tons
Highest 28%
|
Club Quarters East Wacker Drive
75 E Wacker Dr
| Hotel | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 1,378 tons
Highest 34%
|
Trump
🚩
401 N Wabash Ave
| Mixed Use Property | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 16,439 tons #29 Highest
|
The Residences of 41 E. 8th Street
41 E 8th St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 2,279 tons
Highest 19%
|
Museum Park Place South
1841 S Calumet Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 2,326 tons
Highest 19%
|
Park Millennium Condominium Association
222 N Columbus Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 4,477 tons
Highest 8%
|
2700 N. Hampden Court Condominium Association
2700 N Hampden Ct
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 864 tons
Lowest 50%
|
740 Fulton Condominium Association
740 W FULTON ST
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 1,273 tons
Highest 37%
|
55 East Erie Condo
55 E Erie St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 4,216 tons
Highest 9%
|
(IL554-H) - Kinzie Station, Hi-Rise
330 N Jefferson Ct
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 1,732 tons
Highest 27%
|
7300 Venture, LLC
7300 S SOUTH SHORE DR
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 787 tons
Lowest 46%
|
6161-6165 N. Winthrop, L.L.C.
6165 N WINTHROP AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 393 tons
Lowest 17%
|
Fullerton Plaza
1737 - 1829 W Fullerton Ave
| Retail Store | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 939 tons
Highest 47%
|
134 N. LaSalle LLC
134 N LaSalle St
| Office | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 1,574 tons
Highest 30%
|
The Blackstone Hotel
636 S Michigan Ave
| Hotel | 7.7 kg/sqft
Highest 31%
| 2,415 tons
Highest 18%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data