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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Infinite Chicago
28 E Jackson Blvd
| Multifamily Housing | 5.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 12%
| 1,166 tons
Lowest 12%
|
Taft HS -CPS
6545 W Hurlbut St
| K-12 School | 5.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 12%
| 2,113 tons
Highest 48%
|
Amundsen HS -CPS
5110 N Damen Ave
| K-12 School | 5.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 12%
| 1,193 tons
Lowest 14%
|
One River Place Condominium Association
758 N Larrabee St
| Multifamily Housing | 5.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 12%
| 1,975 tons
Lowest 48%
|
CityView Condominium Association
440 N McClurg Ct
| Multifamily Housing | 5.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 12%
| 2,713 tons
Highest 34%
|
The Sinclair
1201 N LaSalle Street
| Multifamily Housing | 5.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 12%
| 3,187 tons
Highest 28%
|
One Museum Park East Condominium Association
1211 S Prairie Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 5.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 12%
| 5,187 tons
Highest 15%
|
Edgewater Beach Apartments Corporation
5555 N Sheridan Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 5.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 12%
| 3,313 tons
Highest 27%
|
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
8765 W Higgins Rd
| Office | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 1,333 tons
Lowest 21%
|
Randolph-Wells Building
205 W Randolph St
| Office | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 1,053 tons
Lowest 4%
|
The Towers
1221 N DEARBORN ST
| Multifamily Housing | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 1,149 tons
Lowest 11%
|
Harper HS -CPS
6520 S Wood St
| K-12 School | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 1,173 tons
Lowest 13%
|
901 W MADISON
901 W MADISON
| Multifamily Housing | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 1,433 tons
Lowest 26%
|
Surfside Condominium
🏆
5815 N Sheridan Rd
| Multifamily Housing | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 1,007 tons
#4 Lowest in Chicago*
|
720 S WELLS ST
720 S WELLS ST
| Multifamily Housing | 5.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 11%
| 2,422 tons
Highest 40%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data