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 “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.
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.) |
---|---|---|---|
RML Specialty Hospital
3534 W Van Buren
| Other - Specialty Hospital | 19.4 kg/sqft
Highest 4%
| 3,686 tons
Highest 10%
|
Flanner Hall-ID# 158842
1068 W Sheridan Rd
| Mixed Use Property | 19.4 kg/sqft
Highest 4%
| 1,253 tons
Highest 37%
|
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago
🚨
225 E Chicago Ave
| Hospital (General Medical & Surgical) | 19.4 kg/sqft
Highest 4%
| 24,952 tons #9 Highest
|
Stuart Building
(Illinois Tech)
10 W 31st Street
| College/University | 19.1 kg/sqft
Highest 4%
| 1,601 tons
Highest 29%
|
Riverside Square & River's Edge/ 90033
3145 S Ashland Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 19.0 kg/sqft
Highest 4%
| 1,418 tons
Highest 33%
|
NMH Prentice Womens Hospital
🚨
250 E Superior St
| Hospital (General Medical & Surgical) | 19.0 kg/sqft
Highest 4%
| 17,983 tons #27 Highest
|
Advocate Trinity Hospital
🚩
2320 E 93rd St
| Hospital (General Medical & Surgical) | 19.0 kg/sqft
Highest 4%
| 6,980 tons
Highest 4%
|
Cobbler Square Lofts (cq34)
1350 N Wells St
| Multifamily Housing | 18.9 kg/sqft
Highest 4%
| 2,675 tons
Highest 15%
|
State Lake LLC
177 N State St
| Office | 18.8 kg/sqft
Highest 4%
| 996 tons
Highest 45%
|
1320 W Fullerton Avenue
1320 W Fullerton Ave
| Fitness Center/Health Club/Gym | 18.7 kg/sqft
Highest 4%
| 2,447 tons
Highest 18%
|
Lakeview Medical Campus LLC
1333 W Belmont Ave
| Medical Office | 18.7 kg/sqft
Highest 4%
| 996 tons
Highest 45%
|
Olympia Centre
🚩
737 N Michigan Ave
| Mixed Use Property | 18.5 kg/sqft
Highest 4%
| 19,593 tons #18 Highest
|
Chicago-Lakeshore
6130 N SHERIDAN RD
| Other - Specialty Hospital | 18.4 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
| 1,485 tons
Highest 32%
|
Quinlan Life Sciences Education and Research Center-ID# 254168
1050 W Sheridan
| Other - Education | 18.2 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
| 2,545 tons
Highest 17%
|
Ratner Athletics Center
(UChicago)
5530 S Ellis Ave
| Fitness Center/Health Club/Gym | 18.2 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
| 3,083 tons
Highest 13%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data