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.) |
---|---|---|---|
3510 N. Pine Grove Ave.
3510 N PINE GROVE AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 443 tons
Lowest 22%
|
Palmer Kedzie Condominium Association
3127 3139 W PALMER ST
| Multifamily Housing | 6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 371 tons
Lowest 15%
|
17 N. State LLC
17 N State St
| Office | 6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 2,519 tons
Highest 17%
|
238-Senior Suites of Kelvyn Park
2715 N CICERO AVE
| Senior Living Community | 6.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 45%
| 469 tons
Lowest 24%
|
The Hampdens
2773 N HAMPDEN CT
| Multifamily Housing | 6.1 kg/sqft
Lowest 43%
| 613 tons
Lowest 36%
|
Viridian on Sheridan (vr033)
734 W Sheridan Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 6.1 kg/sqft
Lowest 43%
| 633 tons
Lowest 37%
|
The Apex Condo
859 W Erie St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.1 kg/sqft
Lowest 43%
| 406 tons
Lowest 18%
|
Englewood
901 W 63rd St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.1 kg/sqft
Lowest 43%
| 381 tons
Lowest 16%
|
Vanguard Lofts Condominium Association
1250 W Van Buren St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.1 kg/sqft
Lowest 43%
| 709 tons
Lowest 42%
|
Morningside Court
1250 W Morse Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 6.1 kg/sqft
Lowest 43%
| 793 tons
Lowest 46%
|
Harold Washington Apartments
4946 N Sheridan Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 6.1 kg/sqft
Lowest 43%
| 268 tons
Lowest 6%
|
Jackson Tower Condominium Association Inc
5555 S Everett Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 6.1 kg/sqft
Lowest 43%
| 952 tons
Highest 47%
|
The Park Monroe Condominium Homes Association
65 E Monroe St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.1 kg/sqft
Lowest 43%
| 2,932 tons
Highest 14%
|
Ida Noyes Hall
1212 E 59th St
| Other - Entertainment/Public Assembly | 6.1 kg/sqft
Lowest 43%
| 561 tons
Lowest 32%
|
Laughlin Falconer Elementary School
3020 N Lamon Ave
| K-12 School | 6.1 kg/sqft
Lowest 43%
| 1,010 tons
Highest 44%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data