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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.

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📰 $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.)
Next Gateway, LLC
🕰️
620 N Lasalle St
Retail Store
8.8 kg/sqft
618 tons
5411 N WINTHROP AVE
5411 N WINTHROP AVE
Multifamily Housing
8.8 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
444 tons
Lowest 21%
Newberry Library
🕰️
60 W Walton St
Library
8.8 kg/sqft
1,766 tons
57 63 W Grand Ave
57 - 63 W Grand Ave
Office
8.8 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
697 tons
Lowest 40%
Parkway Apartments
712 720 W DIVERSEY PKWY
Multifamily Housing
8.8 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
464 tons
Lowest 23%
4600 4616 N WINCHESTER AVE
4600 4616 N WINCHESTER AVE
Multifamily Housing
8.8 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
444 tons
Lowest 21%
Warwick Allerton Hotel Chicago
136 148 E Huron St
Hotel
8.8 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
2,638 tons
Highest 17%
20 W Kinzie St
20 W Kinzie St
Office
8.8 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
3,447 tons
Highest 11%
633 W NORTH AVE
633 W NORTH AVE
Multifamily Housing
8.7 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
2,195 tons
Highest 21%
Hilton Garden Inn Chicago Mccormick Place
123 E Cermak Rd
Hotel
8.7 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
3,154 tons
Highest 13%
The Van Buren
808 W Van Buren
Multifamily Housing
8.7 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
1,020 tons
Highest 44%
Norville Center - Gentile Center-ID#254171
🕰️
(Loyola)
6526 N Winthrop
College/University
8.7 kg/sqft
1,115 tons
Hollywood House
5700 N Sheridan Rd
Multifamily Housing
8.7 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
1,185 tons
Highest 39%
Paper Place Lofts
🕰️
801 South Wells Street
Multifamily Housing
8.7 kg/sqft
1,211 tons
Southview Manor
3311 S Michigan Ave
Senior Living Community
8.7 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
477 tons
Lowest 24%
Page 52 of 226 (Building #766 to #780)

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