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Electrify Chicago

An independent tool for viewing City of Chicago building data

According to the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan(opens in a new tab), 69% of Chicago's emissions come from buildings, making building emissions our biggest challenge and our biggest opportunity as a city to tackle climate change. At Electrify Chicago, we showcase building performance using publicly available data supplemented by community-submitted photographs and building owners.

Start by looking at Chicago's buildings with the highest greenhouse gas intensity i.e. emissions per square foot. Large, efficient, buildings can perform much better than very inefficient small buildings on this metric.

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📰 $30 Million In Missed Fines

The City Of Chicago failed to collect $30 million in potential fines from the building benchmarking ordinance, reducing transparency and accountability.

Read Our Full Blog Post On Millions in Missed Fines.

Legislative update! 🎉

As of late January 2024, legislation is being introduced to require new use more efficient forms of water and space heating, via the Clean And Affordable Buildings Ordinance (CABO), which will reduce the number of highly polluting and inefficient buildings that end up on this site.

If you're in Chicago, write to your alderman to support the CABO! (opens in a new tab)

Chicago Buildings by Greenhouse Gas Intensity

Note: Data includes large Chicago buildings with data from 2022, unless explicitly stated otherwise.

Note: This data only includes buildings whose emissions are reported under the Chicago Energy Benchmarking Ordinance(opens in a new tab). 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.

The latest year of data is from 2022, but we update the site regularly when new data is available, and some buildings may have failed to report that year, and only have older data available.

Property Name / address Primary Property Type Greenhouse Gas Intensity
(kg CO2 eq./sqft)
Total Greenhouse Emissions
(metric tons CO2 eq.)
Student Center
(DePaul)
2250 N Sheffield Ave
College/University
13.3 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
1,992 tons
Highest 23%
Moody Bible Institute, Crowell Hall
(Moody Bible)
820 N LaSalle St
College/University
13.3 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
1,372 tons
Highest 35%
Walmart Supercenter #5965
🕰️
10900 S Doty Ave
Wholesale Club/Supercenter
13.3 kg/sqft
2,068 tons
Farragut Career Academy HS -CPS
🕰️
(CPS)
2345 S Christiana Ave
K-12 School
13.3 kg/sqft
4,781 tons
United Airlines Reservation Center
11555 W Touhy Ave
Office
13.2 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
1,610 tons
Highest 29%
1201 W Washington Blvd
1201 W Washington Blvd
Office
13.2 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
734 tons
Lowest 42%
Lake Meadows 6
500 E 33rd St
Multifamily Housing
13.2 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
4,028 tons
Highest 9%
Kindred Hospital Chicago North
2544 W Montrose Ave
Other - Specialty Hospital
13.1 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
1,947 tons
Highest 24%
Goodman Theatre
56 60 W Randolph St
Office
13.1 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
665 tons
Lowest 38%
22 W Washington St
22 W Washington St
Office
13.0 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
6,123 tons
Highest 5%
639 W GRACE ST
639 W GRACE ST
Multifamily Housing
13.0 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
690 tons
Lowest 39%
Regenstein Library
1100 E 57th St
Library
13.0 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
7,855 tons
Highest 4%
Presence SMEMC St Elizabeth Campus
1431 N Claremont Ave
Mixed Use Property
13.0 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
4,013 tons
Highest 9%
Rockefeller,Mitchell,Reynolds,Hutchinson,Zoology,Erman,Mandel,Oriental,Pres.Home
5850 S Woodlawn Ave
Worship Facility
12.9 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
753 tons
Lowest 43%
Daley -CPS
(CPS)
5024 S Wolcott Ave
K-12 School
12.9 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
945 tons
Highest 47%
Page 20 of 226 (Building #286 to #300)

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data (opens in a new tab)