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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.)
Walmart Supercenter #5617
🕰️
4626 W Diversey Ave
Wholesale Club/Supercenter
11.7 kg/sqft
1,360 tons
Latin School of Chicago Upper School
🕰️
59 W. North BLVD
K-12 School
11.7 kg/sqft
1,780 tons
Hyde Park Tower
5140 S Hyde Park Blvd
Multifamily Housing
11.7 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
1,683 tons
Highest 28%
(ILCH1212) - Park Michigan [external]
1212 S Michigan Ave
Multifamily Housing
11.7 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
2,797 tons
Highest 15%
Blackhawk and Hallstead
🕰️
1460 N Halsted St
Mixed Use Property
11.7 kg/sqft
2,618 tons
Symphony of Chicago West
5130 W JACKSON BLVD
Senior Living Community
11.7 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
1,295 tons
Highest 37%
860 N DEWITT PL
🕰️
860 N DEWITT PL
Multifamily Housing
11.7 kg/sqft
1,455 tons
The Hoxton
200 N Green St
Hotel
11.6 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
1,779 tons
Highest 26%
Virgin Hotels Chicago
🕰️
203 209 N WABASH AVE
Hotel
11.6 kg/sqft
2,299 tons
217 221 N JEFFERSON ST
217 221 N JEFFERSON ST
Office
11.6 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
676 tons
Lowest 39%
Danny Cerero
🕰️
161 W 9th St
K-12 School
11.5 kg/sqft
872 tons
180 N Wabash Ave
180 N Wabash Ave
Office
11.5 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
1,871 tons
Highest 25%
Garvey Elementary -CPS
🕰️
(CPS)
10309 S Morgan St
K-12 School
11.5 kg/sqft
637 tons
521 531 S DEARBORN ST
521 531 S DEARBORN ST
Multifamily Housing
11.5 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
647 tons
Lowest 37%
3601 3613 S WELLS ST
3601 3613 S WELLS ST
Multifamily Housing
11.5 kg/sqft
Highest 9%
1,006 tons
Highest 45%
Page 26 of 226 (Building #376 to #390)

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