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Electrify Chicago

According to the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan(opens in a new tab), 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.

Chicago Buildings by Greenhouse Gas Intensity

Note: Data only includes large Chicago buildings from 2020

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 β€œAs 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.)
Gordon Center for Integrative Science (GCIS)
🚩 πŸ“·
(UChicago)
929 E 57th St
Laboratory
35.9 kg/sqft
#16 Highest
17,199 tons
#34 Highest
Pete's Pulaski
🚩
4343 S Pulaski Rd
Supermarket/Grocery Store
35.6 kg/sqft
#17 Highest
1,994 tons
Lowest 48%
Pete's 118th
🚩
3454 - 3620 E 118th St
Supermarket/Grocery Store
35.3 kg/sqft
#18 Highest
1,905 tons
Lowest 45%
320 E Superior Street
🚩
(Northwestern)
320 E Superior Street
Laboratory
34.7 kg/sqft
#19 Highest
6,477 tons
Highest 11%
Pete's Madison
🚩
2333 W Madison
Supermarket/Grocery Store
34.0 kg/sqft
#20 Highest
2,241 tons
Highest 45%
Pete's Cermak
🚩
2526 W Cermak Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
33.1 kg/sqft
#21 Highest
2,448 tons
Highest 39%
Life Science Research Building
🚩
(Illinois Tech)
35 W 34th Street
College/University
32.8 kg/sqft
#22 Highest
3,377 tons
Highest 27%
8522-Edgewater
🚩
5201 Sheridan Rd
Supermarket/Grocery Store
32.7 kg/sqft
#23 Highest
1,805 tons
Lowest 42%
Accelerator/High Energy Physics
🚩 πŸ“·
(UChicago)
5604 - 5620 S Ellis Ave
Laboratory
32.3 kg/sqft
#24 Highest
1,901 tons
Lowest 45%
Jewel Osco, 03470-Elston & Addison
🚩
3570 N Elston Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
32.2 kg/sqft
#25 Highest
1,771 tons
Lowest 41%
6009 N BROADWAY
🚩
6009 N BROADWAY
Supermarket/Grocery Store
31.6 kg/sqft
#27 Highest
1,788 tons
Lowest 42%
8507-Jefferson Park (Elston)
🚩
5353 N Elston Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
31.6 kg/sqft
#27 Highest
1,995 tons
Lowest 48%
8512-South Loop (16th & Clark)
🚩
1615 S Clark St
Supermarket/Grocery Store
31.4 kg/sqft
#28 Highest
1,944 tons
Lowest 46%
4700 N MARINE DR
🚩
4700 N MARINE DR
Medical Office
31.1 kg/sqft
#29 Highest
4,594 tons
Highest 18%
Hinds Laboratory
🚩 πŸ“·
(UChicago)
5734 S Ellis Ave
Laboratory
30.7 kg/sqft
#30 Highest
4,038 tons
Highest 21%
Page 2 of 86 (Building #16 to #30)

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