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.) |
---|---|---|---|
1820 N Spaulding
1824 N SPAULDING AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 4.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 19%
| 304 tons
Lowest 10%
|
Museum of Contemporary Art
220 E Chicago Ave
| Museum | 4.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 19%
| 1,406 tons
Highest 33%
|
Sweeting Center 860 N. LaSalle
860 N LaSalle St
| College/University | 4.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 19%
| 565 tons
Lowest 32%
|
Roosevelt Collection
150 W Roosevelt Rd
| Mixed Use Property | 4.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 19%
| 5,112 tons
Highest 7%
|
K2 Apartments
365 N Halsted St
| Multifamily Housing | 4.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 19%
| 3,328 tons
Highest 11%
|
1414 North Wells Condominium Association
1414 N WELLS ST
| Multifamily Housing | 4.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 19%
| 378 tons
Lowest 16%
|
4240 N Clarendon
4240 4248 N CLARENDON AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 4.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 19%
| 356 tons
Lowest 13%
|
Clybourn Lofts Condominium Association
1872 N CLYBOURN AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 4.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 19%
| 552 tons
Lowest 31%
|
The River West 2 Condominium Association
939 W HURON ST
| Multifamily Housing | 4.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 19%
| 280 tons
Lowest 8%
|
606 West Cornelia LLC
606 620 W CORNELIA AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 4.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 19%
| 339 tons
Lowest 12%
|
450 Briar Place Condominium Association
450 W BRIAR PL
| Multifamily Housing | 4.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 19%
| 754 tons
Lowest 44%
|
Oakwood Shores Sr
3750 S COTTAGE GROVE AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 4.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 19%
| 357 tons
Lowest 14%
|
411 S Wells
411 - 415 S Wells St
| Office | 4.7 kg/sqft
Lowest 19%
| 276 tons
Lowest 7%
|
Upshore Chapter
4555 N SHERIDAN RD
| Multifamily Housing | 4.6 kg/sqft
Lowest 18%
| 592 tons
Lowest 34%
|
Englewood STEM High School
6835 S Normal Blvd
| K-12 School | 4.6 kg/sqft
Lowest 18%
| 729 tons
Lowest 43%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data