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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.)
McCabe Hall
(DePaul)
900 W Belden Ave
College/University
12.9 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
756 tons
Lowest 44%
850 W Jackson Blvd
850 W Jackson Blvd
Office
12.9 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
1,380 tons
Highest 34%
Garfield Center
10 S Kedzie Ave
Office
12.9 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
810 tons
Lowest 47%
Whitney Young -CPS
(CPS)
211 S Laflin St
K-12 School
12.9 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
5,551 tons
Highest 6%
Julian HS -CPS
🕰️
(CPS)
10330 S Elizabeth St
K-12 School
12.9 kg/sqft
3,441 tons
2026 N CLARK ST
2026 N CLARK ST
Residential Care Facility
12.9 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
794 tons
Lowest 45%
Advocate Trinity - POB
2301 2315 E 93rd St
Medical Office
12.8 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
657 tons
Lowest 38%
Sofitel Chicago Water Tower
20 E Chestnut St
Hotel
12.8 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
4,828 tons
Highest 7%
Glencrest Nursing & Rehab Center
2451 W Touhy Ave
Senior Living Community
12.8 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
1,083 tons
Highest 42%
2641 W Harrison St
2641 W Harrison St
Other
12.8 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
712 tons
Lowest 41%
Harmony Nursing and Rehabilitation
🕰️
3919 W FOSTER AVE
Residential Care Facility
12.8 kg/sqft
825 tons
Kingsbury Ctr
🕰️
1415 N. Kingsbury Street
Strip Mall
12.7 kg/sqft
673 tons
TRC Senior Village 1
🕰️
346 E 53rd St
Senior Living Community
12.7 kg/sqft
873 tons
Mahalia Jackson Apt
(CHA)
9141 - 9177 S South Chicago Ave
Multifamily Housing
12.7 kg/sqft
Highest 7%
1,159 tons
Highest 40%
Wishnick Hall
🕰️
(Illinois Tech)
3255 S Dearborn Street
College/University
12.6 kg/sqft
793 tons
Page 21 of 226 (Building #301 to #315)

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