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.

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.

Read Our Full Blog Post On Millions in Missed Fines.

Chicago Buildings by Greenhouse Gas Intensity

Note: Data From Large Buildings in 2022

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.

Additionally, note that all tons specified are metric tons.

Name / Address Primary Property Type GHG Intensity
(kg CO2 eq./sqft)
Total GHG Emissions
(tons CO2 eq.)
30 N LaSalle St
30 N LaSalle St
Office
5.9 kg/sqft
Lowest 40%
5,736 tons
Highest 6%
321 N Clark @ Riverfront Plaza
321 N Clark St
Office
5.9 kg/sqft
Lowest 40%
5,807 tons
Highest 5%
191 N Wacker
191 N Wacker Dr
Office
5.9 kg/sqft
Lowest 40%
4,594 tons
Highest 8%
150 N Michigan Ave
150 N Michigan Ave
Office
5.9 kg/sqft
Lowest 40%
4,155 tons
Highest 9%
849 863 W BUENA AVE
849 863 W BUENA AVE
Multifamily Housing
5.9 kg/sqft
Lowest 40%
300 tons
Lowest 8%
5514 5524 S BLACKSTONE AVE
5514 5524 S BLACKSTONE AVE
Multifamily Housing
5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 39%
426 tons
Lowest 19%
4631 W FOSTER AVE
4631 W FOSTER AVE
Strip Mall
5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 39%
834 tons
Lowest 48%
Sixty Forty North Wells
640 N Wells
Multifamily Housing
5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 39%
1,580 tons
Highest 30%
Swartberg House
3101 W Touhy Ave
Multifamily Housing
5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 39%
489 tons
Lowest 25%
The Pierre Condominium
2100 N Lincoln Park West
Multifamily Housing
5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 39%
1,102 tons
Highest 42%
Catalyst Charter Es - Howland -CPS
(CPS)
1616 S Spaulding Ave
K-12 School
5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 39%
807 tons
Lowest 46%
Darwin -CPS
(CPS)
3116 W Belden Ave
K-12 School
5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 39%
703 tons
Lowest 40%
Blaine Elementary, James G -CPS
(CPS)
1420 W Grace St
K-12 School
5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 39%
571 tons
Lowest 32%
SoutHigh School ide Occupational Academy HS -CPS
(CPS)
7342 S Hoyne Ave
K-12 School
5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 39%
317 tons
Lowest 10%
Pasteur Elementary -CPS
(CPS)
5825 S Kostner Ave
K-12 School
5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 39%
577 tons
Lowest 32%
Page 139 of 226 (Building #2071 to #2085)

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