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.
As of late January 2024, legislation is being introduced to require new buildings use more efficient forms of water and space heating, via the Clean And Affordable Buildings Ordinance (CABO), which will reduce the number of highly polluting and inefficient that end up on this site.
If you're in Chicago, write to your alderman to support the CABO!
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 2021, 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.) |
---|---|---|---|
The Talbott Hotel
20 E Delaware Pl
| Hotel | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 863 tons
Lowest 49%
|
George B Swift Elementary Specialty School
(CPS)
5900 N Winthrop Ave
| K-12 School | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 885 tons
Highest 49%
|
Tarkington School of Excellence ES
(CPS)
3330 W 71st St
| K-12 School | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 1,105 tons
Highest 41%
|
Esmond Elementary School
(CPS)
1865 W Montvale Ave
| K-12 School | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 434 tons
Lowest 21%
|
Providence Englewood Charter School
6515 S Ashland Ave
| K-12 School | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 433 tons
Lowest 21%
|
Disney II Magnet Elemenatary School
(CPS)
3815 N Kedvale Ave
| K-12 School | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 411 tons
Lowest 19%
|
Seton Hall
2325 N Sheffield Ave
| College/University | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 408 tons
Lowest 19%
|
Belden-Racine Hall
2311 N Racine Ave
| College/University | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 556 tons
Lowest 32%
|
NMH 211 East Ontario
211 E Ontario St
| Office | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 1,516 tons
Highest 31%
|
Wells Street Tower Condominium Association
701 S Wells St
| Multifamily Housing | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 2,176 tons
Highest 20%
|
Faulkner House Condominium Association
70 W Burton Pl
| Multifamily Housing | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 1,723 tons
Highest 28%
|
The Buckingham Condominium Association
360 E Randolph St
| Multifamily Housing | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 4,118 tons
Highest 9%
|
229-Senior Suites-Austin
335 N MENARD AVE
| Senior Living Community | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 484 tons
Lowest 26%
|
The Shelby - Village Green
2300 S MICHIGAN AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 910 tons
Highest 48%
|
8598 - LINCOLN & MCCORMICK
6211 N LINCOLN AVE
| Retail Store | 8.1 kg/sqft
Highest 26%
| 929 tons
Highest 48%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data