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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Hope College Preparatory High School
5515 South Lowe Ave
| K-12 School | 12.4 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 1,984 tons
Highest 23%
|
Student Center
(DePaul)
2250 N Sheffield Ave
| College/University | 12.4 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 1,849 tons
Highest 25%
|
Gateway Centre 175603 Building A (Marshalls)
1701 - 1741 W Howard St
| Strip Mall | 12.4 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 827 tons
Lowest 48%
|
1111 N. Clark St.
1111 N Clark St
| Automobile Dealership | 12.4 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 1,118 tons
Highest 41%
|
McCormick Tribune Campus Center (MTCC)
📷
(Illinois Tech)
3201 S State Street
| College/University | 12.3 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 1,151 tons
Highest 40%
|
Lakeside Terrace
7425 S South Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 12.3 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 682 tons
Lowest 40%
|
Thomas P. Levan Center
2322 N Kenmore Ave
| College/University | 12.3 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 647 tons
Lowest 38%
|
Aviation Lofts
1340 S MICHIGAN AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 12.3 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 614 tons
Lowest 36%
|
The Selfhelp Home, Inc.
908 920 W ARGYLE ST
| Senior Living Community | 12.3 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 1,804 tons
Highest 26%
|
W Chicago City Center
172 W Adams St
| Hotel | 12.3 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 2,986 tons
Highest 14%
|
Womans Athletic Club Chicago
626 640 N Michigan
| Social/Meeting Hall | 12.3 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 1,049 tons
Highest 43%
|
Clayton Residential Home Inc
2026 N CLARK ST
| Residential Care Facility | 12.3 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 760 tons
Lowest 45%
|
Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center
🚨
836 W Wellington Ave
| Hospital (General Medical & Surgical) | 12.3 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 16,172 tons #30 Highest
|
Siegel Hall
3301 S State Street
| College/University | 12.2 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 775 tons
Lowest 45%
|
Viceroy Chicago
1118 N State Street
| Hotel | 12.2 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
| 1,638 tons
Highest 29%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data