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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Greater Lawndale High School For Social Justice
3120 S Kostner Ave
| K-12 School | 10.8 kg/sqft
Highest 12%
| 3,122 tons
Highest 13%
|
Chicago State University Campus
🚩
9501 S Martin Luther King Dr
| College/University | 10.8 kg/sqft
Highest 12%
| 12,618 tons #44 Highest
|
Thompson Center
🚩
100 W Randolph St
| Office | 10.8 kg/sqft
Highest 12%
| 12,909 tons #42 Highest
|
New Field Elementary School
1707 W Morse Ave
| K-12 School | 10.7 kg/sqft
Highest 13%
| 912 tons
Highest 48%
|
Orr Academy High School
730 N Pulaski Rd
| K-12 School | 10.7 kg/sqft
Highest 13%
| 3,252 tons
Highest 12%
|
Bell Federal Building
79 W Monroe St
| Office | 10.7 kg/sqft
Highest 13%
| 2,134 tons
Highest 21%
|
Fullerton Court Apartments
2303 N CLYBOURN AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 10.7 kg/sqft
Highest 13%
| 1,515 tons
Highest 31%
|
400 West Huron Condominium Association
400 W HURON ST
| Multifamily Housing | 10.6 kg/sqft
Highest 13%
| 833 tons
Lowest 48%
|
430 W. Erie
430 W Erie St
| Office | 10.6 kg/sqft
Highest 13%
| 730 tons
Lowest 43%
|
Bookstore
(UChicago)
970 E 58th St
| Retail Store | 10.6 kg/sqft
Highest 13%
| 530 tons
Lowest 29%
|
916 S Wabash
916 S Wabash Ave
| College/University | 10.6 kg/sqft
Highest 13%
| 705 tons
Lowest 42%
|
29 East Madison LLC
29 E Madison St
| Office | 10.6 kg/sqft
Highest 13%
| 2,535 tons
Highest 17%
|
The Thompson Building
350 N Clark St
| Office | 10.6 kg/sqft
Highest 13%
| 1,178 tons
Highest 39%
|
Willis Tower (Rivion LLC)
🚨
📷
233 S Wacker Dr
| Office | 10.6 kg/sqft
Highest 13%
| 47,947 tons #4 Highest
|
Addison Mall LLC
2901 W ADDISON ST
| Strip Mall | 10.6 kg/sqft
Highest 13%
| 731 tons
Lowest 43%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data