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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Wrightwood I
660 W WRIGHTWOOD AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
| 262 tons
Lowest 6%
|
20 West Kinzie
20 W Kinzie St
| Office | 6.8 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
| 2,664 tons
Highest 16%
|
33 North LaSalle Street
33 N LaSalle St
| Office | 6.8 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
| 3,256 tons
Highest 12%
|
237-Senior Suites of W. Humboldt Park
3656 W HURON ST
| Senior Living Community | 6.8 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
| 482 tons
Lowest 25%
|
Prudential Plaza
🚩
130 E Randolph St
| Office | 6.8 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
| 18,670 tons #23 Highest
|
500 West Madison
🚩
500 W Madison St
| Office | 6.8 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
| 12,647 tons #43 Highest
|
311 S. Wacker
🚩
311 S Wacker
| Office | 6.8 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
| 9,725 tons
Highest 3%
|
Presidents Plaza 2
8700 W Bryn Mawr Ave
| Office | 6.8 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
| 2,993 tons
Highest 14%
|
777 State
2 E 8th St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Highest 44%
| 1,796 tons
Highest 26%
|
3710 N PINE GROVE LLC
3710 N PINE GROVE AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 6.7 kg/sqft
Highest 46%
| 405 tons
Lowest 18%
|
900 West
904 W Washington Blvd
| Multifamily Housing | 6.7 kg/sqft
Highest 46%
| 459 tons
Lowest 23%
|
Onni Hudson LP
750 N HUDSON AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 6.7 kg/sqft
Highest 46%
| 1,966 tons
Highest 23%
|
Delmar Apartments
5042 N. Winthrop
| Multifamily Housing | 6.7 kg/sqft
Highest 46%
| 392 tons
Lowest 17%
|
Chinatown
300 W 23rd St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.7 kg/sqft
Highest 46%
| 770 tons
Lowest 45%
|
Pritzker College Prep
4131 W Cortland St
| K-12 School | 6.7 kg/sqft
Highest 46%
| 440 tons
Lowest 21%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data