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City Of Chicago Failed to Collect $30 Million In Potential Fines from Building Benchmarking Ordinance

Not Enforcing The Benchmarking Ordinance's Fines From 2018 - 2022 Reduced Accountability & Transparency

Electrify Chicago has analyzed the last five years of city benchmark data, and found 3,325 instances of building owners not submitting data. Based on the latest (2024) official notification letter (opens in a new tab) fines for non-compliance could total up to $9,200 per year.

A selection of text with a title 'Failure to comply is more expensive than you think', with details of fines and a highlight saying 'These fines could total $9,200 / year'

A screenshot of the energy benchmarking notification letter's section on fines, as of Feb. 2024 (source (opens in a new tab))

With a maximum of $9,200 of fines multiplied by 3,325 instances of non-compliance (source - City of Chicago data portal (opens in a new tab)), that means a whopping $30,590,000 dollars of fines could have been collected by the city's commissioner of business affairs and consumer protection (who is given this responsibility in the original ordinance).

A screenshot of the city data portal showing a view of buildings filtered by the years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022, and a reporting status of 'Not Reporting', with the total results returned of 3,325 underlined in redA screenshot of text that reads 'Showing rows 1-100 of 3325'

The full data portal screenshot, and a zoomed in view of the query result count (source (opens in a new tab))

Through a FOIA request, the city reported that they had no recorded instances of enforcement. We believe it's extremely unlikely the city levied and then collected fines without any record, and thus believe that no fines were levied in this time.

Why This Matters

Without consequences for non-reporting, building owners who perform poorly can simply opt out of reporting their data. Some owners of very large and culturally significant buildings have consistently not submitted. As an example, view 2023's largest non reporting buildings in the data portal (opens in a new tab). Not having all building owners report means the goals of the ordinance aren't being met, and the public loses out on valuable information for buildings that could be emitting the most or be the least efficient.

Next Steps

An older version of the energy benchmarking notification (source - WayBackMachine (opens in a new tab)) did not contain any information of potential fines, and just this recent update to make sure building owners are aware of the consequences for not reporting should improve reporting. However we believe it is crucial the city then follow through and fine any owners who choose to ignore repeated requests to report their energy use, in keeping with the original ordinance. We also believe that larger fines may be necessary to get the owners of very large and inefficient buildings to report their emissions, who may want to obscure their pollution from the public.

Questions?

Contact the lead developer on this site, Viktor Köves, by emailing contact@viktorkoves.com