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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Parkside of Old Town Midrise Leasehold Condominium Association
437 W DIVISION ST
| Multifamily Housing | 10.4 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 1,143 tons
Highest 40%
|
AMA Plaza
🚩
330 N Wabash Av
| Office | 10.4 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 19,501 tons #19 Highest
|
Park West Condominium
444 W FULLERTON PKWY
| Multifamily Housing | 10.4 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 1,998 tons
Highest 23%
|
500 N Michigan
500 N Michigan Ave
| Office | 10.4 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 4,191 tons
Highest 9%
|
5148 N Kedzie Ave
5148 N KEDZIE AVE
| College/University | 10.4 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 1,185 tons
Highest 39%
|
6700 Crandon Condominium Association
6700 S Crandon Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 10.3 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 841 tons
Lowest 48%
|
Press Office Building
1427 E 60th St
| Office | 10.3 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 968 tons
Highest 46%
|
1333 North Kingsbury
1333 N Kingsbury
| Office | 10.3 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 1,084 tons
Highest 42%
|
National Teachers Elementary Academy
55 W Cermak Rd
| K-12 School | 10.3 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 1,604 tons
Highest 29%
|
Louis A Agassiz Elementary School
2851 N Seminary Ave
| K-12 School | 10.3 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 594 tons
Lowest 34%
|
Clargran
515 N Clark St
| Hotel | 10.3 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 3,551 tons
Highest 11%
|
North Harbor Tower (nr021)
175 N Harbor Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 10.3 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 5,949 tons
Highest 5%
|
The Studios
1801 S WABASH AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 10.3 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 611 tons
Lowest 35%
|
5600 N. Sheridan
5600 N SHERIDAN RD
| Multifamily Housing | 10.3 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 1,030 tons
Highest 44%
|
Michigan 30 LLC
30 N Michigan Ave
| Office | 10.3 kg/sqft
Highest 14%
| 2,285 tons
Highest 19%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data