Electrify Chicago

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.

2017 GHG Emissions -
31M metric tons CO2 equivalent
69% buildings
24% transportation
7% waste

Chicago 2022 CAP

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. 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 2020, but when new benchmark data is available, we'll update the site.

Chicago 2022 CAP

Property Name / address	Primary Property Type	Greenhouse Gas Intensity (kg CO₂ eq./sqft)	Total Greenhouse Emissions (metric tons CO₂ eq.)
8527-Ukrainian Village 🚩 2021 W Chicago Ave	Supermarket/Grocery Store	27.3 kg/sqft #46 Highest	1,502 tons Lowest 29%
Jewel Osco, 03224-Irving Park & Narraganset 🚩 6430 W Irving Park Rd	Supermarket/Grocery Store	27.2 kg/sqft #48 Highest	1,566 tons Lowest 33%
303 E Superior Street 🚩 (Northwestern) 303 E Superior Street	Laboratory	27.2 kg/sqft #48 Highest	11,381 tons Highest 5%
70800552 -- Chicago 🚩 7030 S Ashland Ave	Supermarket/Grocery Store	27.0 kg/sqft #49 Highest	1,712 tons Lowest 38%
Jewel Osco, 03349-Narragansett & Diversey 2520 N Narragansett Ave	Supermarket/Grocery Store	26.9 kg/sqft Highest 4%	1,728 tons Lowest 39%
Jewel Osco, 02502-Clybourn & Wrightwood 2550 N Clybourn St	Supermarket/Grocery Store	26.9 kg/sqft Highest 4%	2,293 tons Highest 43%
5841 S. Maryland Ave MC0985 🚨 (UChicago) 5841 S. Maryland Ave MC0985	Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)	26.9 kg/sqft Highest 4%	146,536 tons #2 Highest
Lurie Children's Lincoln Park Outpatient Center - Deming 467 W Deming Pl	Mixed Use Property	26.9 kg/sqft Highest 4%	1,692 tons Lowest 38%
Market Place at Six Corners 10361 4612 - 4730 W Irving Park Rd	Other - Mall	26.8 kg/sqft Highest 4%	2,090 tons Highest 49%
Rush University Medical Center 🚨 1653 W Congress Pkwy	Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)	26.4 kg/sqft Highest 4%	102,661 tons #3 Highest
70800789 -- 47th ~ Damen 4620 S Damen Ave	Supermarket/Grocery Store	26.2 kg/sqft Highest 4%	1,999 tons Lowest 48%
Gateway to West Loop 16 - 40 S Halsted St	Supermarket/Grocery Store	26.1 kg/sqft Highest 4%	2,500 tons Highest 38%
8516-Bucktown 2112 N ASHLAND AVE	Supermarket/Grocery Store	26.1 kg/sqft Highest 4%	2,092 tons Highest 49%
CME Group Inc 333 S LaSalle St	Financial Office	26.0 kg/sqft Highest 4%	6,781 tons Highest 10%
300 E Superior Street (Northwestern) 300 E Superior Street	Laboratory	26.0 kg/sqft Highest 4%	7,911 tons Highest 8%

Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data