Electrify Chicago
An independent tool for viewing City of Chicago building data
According to the
2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan
,
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.
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!
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. 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.) |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Crown Hall
📷
🕰️
(Illinois Tech)
3360 S State Street
| College/University | 555.1 kg/sqft  | 30,139 tons |
|
Digital Lakeside
📷
🕰️
350 E Cermak
| Data Center | 142.1 kg/sqft | 173,706 tons |
|
Hyde Park West Apartments
🕰️
5325 S. Cottage Grove Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 126.0 kg/sqft | 18,454 tons |
|
CoreSite
🚨
📷
427 S LaSalle St
| Data Center | 114.8 kg/sqft #1 Highest
| 18,365 tons #19 Highest
|
|
Digital Printer's Row
🚨
📷
600 S Federal St
| Data Center | 93.5 kg/sqft #2 Highest
| 17,324 tons #21 Highest
|
|
Herman Hall
📷
🕰️
(Illinois Tech)
3241 S Federal Street
| College/University | 88.9 kg/sqft | 9,884 tons |
|
Shop & Save Market - Nagle
📷
🕰️
6312 N Nagle Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 83.7 kg/sqft | 5,584 tons |
|
Life Sciences Research Building
🕰️
(Illinois Tech)
35 W 34th Street
| College/University | 80.7 kg/sqft | 8,317 tons |
|
6045 Kenwood Building
🚨
📷
(UChicago)
6045 S Kenwood Ave
| Office | 79.7 kg/sqft #3 Highest
| 7,900 tons
Highest 4%
|
|
Salem Baptist Church of Chicago
🚨
10909 S Cottage Grove Ave
| Worship Facility | 78.0 kg/sqft #4 Highest
| 7,160 tons
Highest 4%
|
|
Keating Hall
📷
🕰️
(Illinois Tech)
3040 S Wabash Avenue
| College/University | 69.5 kg/sqft | 3,694 tons |
|
601 W Polk Street
🚨
601 W Polk Street
| Data Center | 62.2 kg/sqft #5 Highest
| 6,467 tons
Highest 5%
|
|
Searle Chemistry Laboratory
🚨
📷
(UChicago)
5735 S Ellis Ave
| Laboratory | 49.0 kg/sqft #6 Highest
| 4,193 tons
Highest 9%
|
|
BSLC
🕰️
924 E 57th St
| Laboratory | 47.2 kg/sqft | 8,296 tons |
|
WGN Studios
🚨
2501 W BRADLEY PL
| Office | 46.8 kg/sqft #7 Highest
| 3,068 tons
Highest 14%
|
Data Source:
Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data