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.) |
---|---|---|---|
4747 S DR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR DR
4747 S DR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR DR
| Multifamily Housing | 10.2 kg/sqft
Highest 28%
| 2,505 tons
Highest 38%
|
Cook County Building
118 N Clark St
| Office | 10.2 kg/sqft
Highest 28%
| 6,532 tons
Highest 11%
|
River East Center Campus
🚩
322 E Illinois St
| Mixed Use Property | 10.2 kg/sqft
Highest 28%
| 15,479 tons #38 Highest
|
The Maxwell
1100 S Canal St
| Strip Mall | 10.1 kg/sqft
Highest 28%
| 2,437 tons
Highest 40%
|
Delaware Place Private Residences
875 N DEARBORN ST
| Multifamily Housing | 10.1 kg/sqft
Highest 28%
| 1,505 tons
Lowest 30%
|
Piper's Alley
230 W North Ave
| Mixed Use Property | 10.1 kg/sqft
Highest 28%
| 2,223 tons
Highest 46%
|
The Edge Lofts & Tower Condominium Association
210 S Des Plaines St
| Multifamily Housing | 10.1 kg/sqft
Highest 28%
| 2,392 tons
Highest 41%
|
Quadrangle House
6700 S Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 10.1 kg/sqft
Highest 28%
| 2,237 tons
Highest 45%
|
Dearborn Homes
🚩
2960 S Federal St
| Multifamily Housing | 10.1 kg/sqft
Highest 28%
| 7,159 tons
Highest 9%
|
737 North Michigan Avenue Investors LLC
🚩
737 N Michigan Ave
| Mixed Use Property | 10.0 kg/sqft
Highest 29%
| 10,567 tons
Highest 6%
|
CW GLL 444 N Michigan
🏆
444 N Michigan Ave
| Office | 10.0 kg/sqft
Highest 29%
| 5,190 tons
Highest 14%
|
Target, Chicago West Loop (2781)
1101 W Jackson Blvd
| Retail Store | 10.0 kg/sqft
Highest 29%
| 1,685 tons
Lowest 37%
|
O.P.LLC/Orleans Plaza
351 W Hubbard St
| Office | 10.0 kg/sqft
Highest 29%
| 1,904 tons
Lowest 45%
|
Corboy Law Center
25 E Pearson St
| College/University | 10.0 kg/sqft
Highest 29%
| 3,069 tons
Highest 30%
|
Bouchet Elementary Acad -CPS
🏆
7355 S Jeffrey Blvd
| K-12 School | 10.0 kg/sqft
Highest 29%
| 1,011 tons
#11 Lowest in Chicago*
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data