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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Twenty N. State Condominium Association
20 N State St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 1,444 tons
Lowest 27%
|
Lakeside Tower Condo Association
1600 S Indiana Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 1,650 tons
Lowest 35%
|
Linea Apartments
211 221 W LAKE ST
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 1,949 tons
Lowest 47%
|
850 858 N LAKESHORE DR
850 858 N LAKESHORE DR
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 1,703 tons
Lowest 38%
|
820 S PARK TER
820 S PARK TER
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 1,075 tons
Lowest 5%
|
Fine Arts Building
🏆
408 410 S Michigan Ave
| Office | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 1,091 tons
Lowest 6%
|
Promontory Apartments
5530 S SHORE DR
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 1,231 tons
Lowest 16%
|
Kingsbury on the Park
653 N Kingsbury St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 1,903 tons
Lowest 45%
|
211 E Chicago Ave
211 E Chicago Ave
| Office | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 2,685 tons
Highest 35%
|
2930 N SHERIDAN RD
2930 N SHERIDAN RD
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 1,636 tons
Lowest 35%
|
Hermitage on Huron Condominium Association
70 W Huron St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 1,791 tons
Lowest 42%
|
Judge Frederick W. Slater Apartments
740 E 43rd St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 1,701 tons
Lowest 38%
|
The Jewelers Building
35 E Wacker Dr
| Office | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 4,192 tons
Highest 20%
|
1111 N. Dearborn St
1111 N. Dearborn St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 2,236 tons
Highest 45%
|
Presence Resurrection Retirement Community
7262 W Peterson Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 6.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 34%
| 2,764 tons
Highest 34%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data