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.) |
---|---|---|---|
West Ridge Elementary School
6700 N Whipple St
| K-12 School | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 740 tons
Lowest 43%
|
1100 N. Dearborn
1100 N Dearborn St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 1,324 tons
Highest 35%
|
40 E. Oak
40 E Oak St
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 1,134 tons
Highest 40%
|
The Heritage at Millennium Park
130 N Garland Ct
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 6,888 tons
Highest 4%
|
990 North Lake Shore Drive
990 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 2,203 tons
Highest 20%
|
Hollywood Towers Condo Association
5701 N Sheridan Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 4,151 tons
Highest 9%
|
Waterford Condominium
4170 N Marine Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 2,472 tons
Highest 17%
|
Hotel Blake
500 S DEARBORN ST
| Hotel | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 1,114 tons
Highest 41%
|
7219 N Sheridan Rd
7219 N SHERIDAN RD
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 393 tons
Lowest 17%
|
41-51 N Central Ave
51 N CENTRAL AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 407 tons
Lowest 19%
|
1055 W Granville
1055 1065 W GRANVILLE AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 600 tons
Lowest 35%
|
Adler Planetarium
1300 S Lake Shore Dr
| Museum | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 1,301 tons
Highest 36%
|
7447 South Shore LLC
7447 S South Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 2,467 tons
Highest 17%
|
440 North Wells Street
440 N Wells St
| Office | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 834 tons
Lowest 48%
|
Lake Grove Village Apartments
3500 S LAKE PARK AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 7.4 kg/sqft
Highest 35%
| 3,452 tons
Highest 11%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data