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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.)
Okeeffe Elementary -CPS
(CPS)
6940 S Merrill Ave
K-12 School
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
659 tons
Lowest 38%
Tilton-CPS
🕰️
(CPS)
223 N Keeler Ave
K-12 School
6.9 kg/sqft
723 tons
Goethe Elementary, J W Von -CPS
(CPS)
2236 N Rockwell Ave
K-12 School
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
554 tons
Lowest 30%
Mayer -CPS
(CPS)
2250 N Clifton Ave
K-12 School
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
506 tons
Lowest 27%
Mcclellan Elementary -CPS
(CPS)
3527 S Wallace St
K-12 School
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
399 tons
Lowest 17%
Ashe Elementary -CPS
(CPS)
8507 S Ingleside
K-12 School
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
379 tons
Lowest 15%
Belden-Racine Hall
(DePaul)
2311 N Racine Ave
College/University
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
473 tons
Lowest 23%
Paramount Lofts Condominium Association
1645 W Ogden
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
1,906 tons
Highest 24%
Ada S Dennison-McKlinley Apts
(CHA)
661 E 69th St
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
571 tons
Lowest 32%
Sulzer Library
(Chicago)
4455 N Lincoln Ave
Library
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
576 tons
Lowest 32%
Americana Towers Condominium
1636 N Wells St
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
2,469 tons
Highest 18%
Winston Towers No. 5
7141 N Kedzie Ave
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
1,993 tons
Highest 23%
River Plaza
405 N Wabash Ave
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
5,047 tons
Highest 7%
Shoreline Towers CA
6301 N Sheridan Rd
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
3,051 tons
Highest 14%
R&D 659 CA
659 W Randolph St
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
2,114 tons
Highest 21%
Page 96 of 226 (Building #1426 to #1440)

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