An independent tool for viewing City of Chicago building data
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.
The City Of Chicago failed to collect $30 million in potential fines from the building benchmarking ordinance, reducing transparency and accountability.
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!
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 2021, 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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Donald Morrill Math & Science Elementary School
(CPS)
6011 S Rockwell St
| K-12 School | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 646 tons
Lowest 38%
|
Josefa Ortiz De Dominguez Elementary School
(CPS)
3000 S Lawndale Ave
| K-12 School | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 413 tons
Lowest 19%
|
Washington Irving Elementary School
(CPS)
749 S Oakley Blvd
| K-12 School | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 358 tons
Lowest 14%
|
1961 - ELSTON/LEAVITT
2542 Elston Ave
| Retail Store | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 776 tons
Lowest 45%
|
700 W. Van Buren Condo
700 W Van Buren
| Multifamily Housing | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 802 tons
Lowest 47%
|
Knight Buildling
549 W Randolph St
| Office | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 684 tons
Lowest 40%
|
Northwest Armory
1551 N Kedzie Ave
| Other | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 1,325 tons
Highest 35%
|
Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy HS
(CPS)
250 E 111th St
| K-12 School | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 1,727 tons
Highest 27%
|
111 E Chestnut Condominium Association
111 E Chestnut St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 3,804 tons
Highest 10%
|
Regatta Condominium Association
420 E Waterside Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 2,952 tons
Highest 14%
|
5100 Marine Drive Condominium Association
5100 N Marine Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 1,805 tons
Highest 26%
|
The Deco (nl005)
1400 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 2,127 tons
Highest 21%
|
Fulton House Condominium Association
345-355 N Canal St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 1,132 tons
Highest 40%
|
River North Park (rv57)
320 W Illinois St
| Multifamily Housing | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 3,019 tons
Highest 14%
|
155 North Wacker
155 N Wacker Dr
| Office | 6.5 kg/sqft
Highest 49%
| 9,169 tons
Highest 3%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data