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.) |
---|---|---|---|
150 North Riverside Plaza
150 N RIVERSIDE PLAZA
| Office | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 8,678 tons
Highest 3%
|
200 S. Michigan Ave
200 S Michigan Ave
| Office | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 1,667 tons
Highest 28%
|
550 West Washington
550 W Washington
| Office | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 2,282 tons
Highest 19%
|
IL0000FC-CHICAGO FEDERAL CTR
🚨
219 S Dearborn
| Mixed Use Property | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 18,420 tons #26 Highest
|
One South Wacker
1 S Wacker
| Office | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 7,795 tons
Highest 4%
|
One South Dearborn
1 S Dearborn
| Office | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 5,459 tons
Highest 6%
|
20 North Wacker Drive
🚩
20 N Wacker Dr
| Office | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 10,146 tons
Highest 2%
|
5514 Blackstone Ave
5514 5524 S BLACKSTONE AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 5.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 35%
| 417 tons
Lowest 19%
|
River Walk Townhomes
2903-2923 N Claremont Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 5.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 35%
| 408 tons
Lowest 19%
|
McCrory Senior Housing
1659 W Washington Blvd
| Multifamily Housing | 5.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 35%
| 359 tons
Lowest 14%
|
Perlstein Hall
10 W 33rd Street
| College/University | 5.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 35%
| 583 tons
Lowest 34%
|
Schiff Residence
1244 North Clybourn
| Multifamily Housing | 5.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 35%
| 366 tons
Lowest 14%
|
EMME Chicago - CO (mz16)
165 N Desplaines St
| Multifamily Housing | 5.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 35%
| 1,121 tons
Highest 41%
|
Buck City Lofts
1740 N Maplewood
| Multifamily Housing | 5.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 35%
| 545 tons
Lowest 31%
|
North Washington Park Manor
550 E 50th Pl
| Multifamily Housing | 5.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 35%
| 304 tons
Lowest 10%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data