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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Sofitel Chicago Water Tower
20 E Chestnut St
| Hotel | 12.4 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 4,690 tons
Highest 17%
|
IIT Tower
🏆
📷
(Illinois Tech)
10 W 35th Street
| College/University | 12.3 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 4,843 tons
Highest 16%
|
Lurie Children's Faculty Office Building
🏆
155 E Superior St
| Office | 12.3 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 1,016 tons
#17 Lowest
|
1111 N Clark St
1111 N Clark St
| Automobile Dealership | 12.3 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 1,110 tons
Lowest 8%
|
Harold Washington Library
400 S State St
| Library | 12.2 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 9,208 tons
Highest 7%
|
The Womens Treatment Center
140 N Ashland Ave
| Residential Care Facility | 12.2 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 1,273 tons
Lowest 18%
|
Little Village HS Campus -CPS
3120 S Kostner Ave
| K-12 School | 12.2 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 3,534 tons
Highest 25%
|
1165 N Clark St
1165 N Clark St
| Office | 12.1 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 1,239 tons
Lowest 16%
|
Damen/Hastings
1340 S Damen Ave
| Office | 12.1 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 1,934 tons
Lowest 46%
|
Walmart Supercenter #5617
4626 W Diversey Ave
| Wholesale Club/Supercenter | 12.1 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 1,413 tons
Lowest 25%
|
Villa at Windsor Park
2649 E 75th St
| Senior Living Community | 12.1 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 1,181 tons
Lowest 14%
|
180 N Wabash Ave
180 N Wabash Ave
| Office | 12.1 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 1,955 tons
Lowest 47%
|
Palmolive Building Condominium Association
913 - 921 N Michigan Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 12.1 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
| 4,802 tons
Highest 17%
|
820 W Jackson Blvd
820 W Jackson Blvd
| Office | 12.0 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
| 2,095 tons
Highest 48%
|
350 N LaSalle St
350 N LaSalle St
| Office | 12.0 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
| 1,454 tons
Lowest 27%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data