An independent tool for viewing City of Chicago building data
According to the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan, a whopping 69% of Chicago's emissions come from buildings, making it our biggest challenge and our biggest opportunity as a city to tackle change. At Electrify Chicago, we want to showcase some of the best and worst performing buildings in the city using publicly available data and manual annotations to add building photographs and label multi-building owners like universities.
You can start by looking at Chicago's buildings with the highest greenhouse gas intensity - this means that they use the most energy when adjusted per unit of square foot, so big buildings could actually perform much better than very inefficient small buildings on this metric.
The City Of Chicago failed to collect $30 million in potential fines from the building benchmarking ordinance, reducing transparency and accountability.
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!
Note: This data only includes buildings whose emissions are reported under the Chicago Energy Benchmarking Ordinance. According to the City βAs of 2016, this list includes all commercial, institutional, and residential buildings larger than 50,000 square feet.β This dataset is also then filtered to only buildings with reported emissions > 1,000 metric tons CO2 equivalent.
This data is also from 2021, but when new benchmark data is available, we'll update the site.
Property Name / address | Primary Property Type |
Greenhouse Gas Intensity (kg CO2 eq./sqft) |
Total Greenhouse Emissions (metric tons CO2 eq.) |
---|---|---|---|
Fulton-Loomis-Carroll Condominium Association
π
1400 W FULTON ST
| Office | 2.3 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
| 147 tons
#21 Lowest in Chicago*
|
Tech Central
3424 S State Street
| College/University | 2.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
| 180 tons
Lowest 2%
|
Hayden/1109 W. Washington
1109 W Washington
| Multifamily Housing | 2.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
| 227 tons
Lowest 4%
|
240 N. Ashland
240 N Ashland Ave
| Office | 2.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
| 179 tons
Lowest 2%
|
Much-Musikantow Co.
π
8001 - 8007 S Cottage Grove Ave
| Other - Public Services | 2.2 kg/sqft
Lowest 1%
| 118 tons
#13 Lowest in Chicago*
|
Tech South
π
3450 S State Street
| College/University | 2.1 kg/sqft
#27 Lowest in Chicago*
| 170 tons
Lowest 2%
|
Renaissance Saint Luke
π
1501 W Belmont Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 2.1 kg/sqft
#27 Lowest in Chicago*
| 156 tons
#28 Lowest in Chicago*
|
Polaris Charter Adademy
π
(CPS)
620 N Sawyer Ave
| K-12 School | 2.1 kg/sqft
#27 Lowest in Chicago*
| 190 tons
Lowest 2%
|
1000 West Washington Lofts Condo
π
1000 W Washington Blvd
| Multifamily Housing | 2.1 kg/sqft
#27 Lowest in Chicago*
| 694 tons
Lowest 41%
|
CICERO ANNEX
π
8101 8141 S CICERO AVE
| Strip Mall | 2.0 kg/sqft
#24 Lowest in Chicago*
| 130 tons
#18 Lowest in Chicago*
|
CA 23
π
15 23 N ABERDEEN ST
| Multifamily Housing | 2.0 kg/sqft
#24 Lowest in Chicago*
| 237 tons
Lowest 5%
|
540 Surf Building
π
540 W SURF ST
| Multifamily Housing | 1.9 kg/sqft
#22 Lowest in Chicago*
| 120 tons
#15 Lowest in Chicago*
|
Circle Park
π
1111 S ASHLAND AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 1.9 kg/sqft
#22 Lowest in Chicago*
| 757 tons
Lowest 44%
|
4611 South Ellis LLC
π
4611 S ELLIS AVE
| Worship Facility | 1.7 kg/sqft
#21 Lowest in Chicago*
| 85 tons
#11 Lowest in Chicago*
|
Trailhead
π
1744 N Western Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 1.6 kg/sqft
#18 Lowest in Chicago*
| 215 tons
Lowest 3%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data