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.) |
---|---|---|---|
WTTW 11 - Main Campus
5400 N St Louis Ave
| Office | 13.4 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 2,448 tons
Highest 18%
|
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago Main Building
1100 E 55TH ST
| College/University | 13.4 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 1,603 tons
Highest 29%
|
1123 The Allegro Royal Sonesta Hotel 171 W Randolph
🚩
151 171 W Randolph St
| Hotel | 13.4 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 5,149 tons
Highest 7%
|
Walter Henri Dyett High School for the Arts
555 E 51st St
| K-12 School | 13.3 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 2,160 tons
Highest 21%
|
420 N Wabash Ave
420 N Wabash Ave
| Office | 13.3 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 1,365 tons
Highest 34%
|
Walmart Supercenter #5965
10900 S Doty Ave
| Wholesale Club/Supercenter | 13.3 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 2,068 tons
Highest 22%
|
Regenstein Library
1100 E 57th St
| Library | 13.3 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 8,030 tons
Highest 4%
|
Lavin Family Pavilion (Outpatient Care Pavilion)
259 E Erie St
| Medical Office | 13.3 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 9,226 tons
Highest 3%
|
63029-Sunrise of Lincoln Park
2710 N. Clark St
| Senior Living Community | 13.2 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 661 tons
Lowest 39%
|
SpringHill Suites O'Hare
8101 W Higgins Rd
| Hotel | 13.2 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 2,106 tons
Highest 21%
|
Whitney M Young Magnet High School
211 S Laflin St
| K-12 School | 13.2 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 5,702 tons
Highest 6%
|
Jackson Square Nursing Home
5130 W JACKSON BLVD
| Senior Living Community | 13.0 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 1,434 tons
Highest 33%
|
540 West Madison
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540 W Madison
| Financial Office | 13.0 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 15,899 tons #31 Highest
|
City Hall
121 N LaSalle St
| Office | 12.9 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 5,325 tons
Highest 6%
|
Joffco Square
555 W Roosevelt Rd
| Other - Mall | 12.9 kg/sqft
Highest 8%
| 1,229 tons
Highest 38%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data