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.)
Ultra Foods
🕰️
3250 W. 87th St
Supermarket/Grocery Store
0.5 kg/sqft
40 tons
116 S. Michigan Ave.
🕰️
116 S Michigan Ave
College/University
0.5 kg/sqft
53 tons
6200 N Hiawatha Ave
🕰️
6200 N HIAWATHA AVE
Office
0.4 kg/sqft
45 tons
Ridgemoor Estates 1 Condominium
🕰️
4106 N NARRAGANSETT AVE
Multifamily Housing
0.4 kg/sqft
24 tons
Hall Plaza West
🕰️
4628 - 4650 W Diversey Ave
Strip Mall
0.3 kg/sqft
17 tons
Cornell Square
🕰️
4922-4942 S. Cornell
Multifamily Housing
0.3 kg/sqft
25 tons
5948 5958 N BROADWAY
🏆
5948 5958 N BROADWAY
Office
0.3 kg/sqft
#1 Lowest in Chicago*
5 tons
#1 Lowest in Chicago*
Page 226 of 226 (Building #3376 to #3382)

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