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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.

New Article
📰 $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.)
Strand Apartments
6321 S Cottage Grove Ave
Multifamily Housing
2.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 2%
214 tons
Lowest 3%
Irving Park Middle -CPS
(CPS)
3815 N Kedvale Ave
K-12 School
2.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 2%
501 tons
Lowest 26%
Atrio Apartments (md104)
🕰️
1926 1960 W HARRISON ST
Multifamily Housing
2.4 kg/sqft
591 tons
141 173 W OAK ST
141 173 W OAK ST
Multifamily Housing
2.4 kg/sqft
Lowest 2%
395 tons
Lowest 16%
Erie Elementary Charter School
🏆
1405 N Washtenaw
K-12 School
2.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
127 tons
#14 Lowest in Chicago*
2758 2768 N MILWAUKEE AVE
2758 2768 N MILWAUKEE AVE
Multifamily Housing
2.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
181 tons
Lowest 2%
LZ Products
🕰️
2121 W 21st Street
Wholesale Club/Supercenter
2.3 kg/sqft
163 tons
Streeterville Center
233 E ERIE ST
Multifamily Housing
2.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
542 tons
Lowest 30%
SEELEY BUILDING
🕰️
4424 4432 N SEELEY AVE
Multifamily Housing
2.3 kg/sqft
134 tons
Tech Central
🕰️
3424 S State Street
College/University
2.2 kg/sqft
180 tons
343 W. Erie St
343 W. Erie St
Office
2.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
277 tons
Lowest 6%
The Belden Stratford
2300 N Lincoln Park West
Multifamily Housing
2.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
598 tons
Lowest 33%
Tech South
🕰️
3450 S State Street
College/University
2.1 kg/sqft
170 tons
7350 S. Phillips, LLC
🕰️
7350 S. Phillips
Multifamily Housing
2.1 kg/sqft
232 tons
4537 S DREXEL BLVD
4537 S DREXEL BLVD
Multifamily Housing
2.1 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
293 tons
Lowest 8%
Page 221 of 226 (Building #3301 to #3315)

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