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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.)
1212 Lake Shore Drive Condominium
1212 N Lake Shore Dr
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
2,624 tons
Highest 17%
1300 Lake Shore Drive Condominium Association
1300 N Lake Shore Dr
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
2,533 tons
Highest 17%
Harper Square Cooperative
4800 - 4850 S Lake Park Ave
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
4,338 tons
Highest 8%
Waterford Condominium
4170 N Marine Dr
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
2,322 tons
Highest 19%
Washington Courts
5424 W WASHINGTON BLVD
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
748 tons
Lowest 43%
1430 N LAKE SHORE DR
1430 N LAKE SHORE DR
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
806 tons
Lowest 46%
ACME Hotel Company
15 E Ohio St
Hotel
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
553 tons
Lowest 30%
Lincoln Park Plaza
600 W Diversey Pkwy
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
1,867 tons
Highest 25%
SoNo East
840 W Blackhawk St
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
2,190 tons
Highest 21%
Lakeview East Cooperative
707 W Waveland Ave
Multifamily Housing
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
1,619 tons
Highest 29%
Rice Building
815 W Van Buren St
Office
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
555 tons
Lowest 31%
29 N Wacker Dr
29 N Wacker Dr
Office
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
947 tons
Highest 47%
Howard & Western Shopping Center
7510 - 7578 N Western Ave
Strip Mall
6.9 kg/sqft
Highest 41%
481 tons
Lowest 25%
West Chatham Plaza
🕰️
122 - 160 W. 79th
Strip Mall
6.9 kg/sqft
468 tons
1 - 15 E Oak St
🕰️
1 - 15 E Oak St
Retail Store
6.9 kg/sqft
651 tons
Page 97 of 226 (Building #1441 to #1455)

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