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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.

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! (opens in a new tab)

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(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.

Property Name / address Primary Property Type Greenhouse Gas Intensity
(kg CO2 eq./sqft)
Total Greenhouse Emissions
(metric tons CO2 eq.)
Alice B. Sharp Building
🕰️
(SAIC)
37 S Wabash Ave
College/University
8.9 kg/sqft
2,033 tons
Target, Chicago Peterson Ave (2079)
2112 W Peterson Ave
Retail Store
8.9 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
1,427 tons
Highest 33%
International Tower
🕰️
8550 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Office
8.9 kg/sqft
2,758 tons
Cook County Building
118 N Clark St
Office
8.9 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
5,658 tons
Highest 6%
1605 E 50TH ST
1605 E 50TH ST
Multifamily Housing
8.9 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
529 tons
Lowest 29%
2111 W Roosevelt Rd
2111 W Roosevelt Rd
Office
8.9 kg/sqft
Highest 19%
4,071 tons
Highest 9%
Malcolm X College & School of Health Sciences
🕰️
(City Colleges)
1900 W JACKSON BLVD
College/University
8.8 kg/sqft
4,774 tons
Tonti -CPS
(CPS)
5815 S Homan Ave
K-12 School
8.8 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
788 tons
Lowest 45%
Barton Elementary -CPS
🕰️
(CPS)
7650 S Wolcott Ave
K-12 School
8.8 kg/sqft
725 tons
Altgeld Elementary-CPS
🕰️
(CPS)
1340 W 71st St
K-12 School
8.8 kg/sqft
611 tons
CarrollRosenwald-CPS
🕰️
(CPS)
2601 W 80TH ST
K-12 School
8.8 kg/sqft
555 tons
Burr Elementary, Jonathan -CPS
(CPS)
1621 W Wabansia Ave
K-12 School
8.8 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
535 tons
Lowest 29%
Washington HS , George -CPS
(CPS)
3535 E 114th St
K-12 School
8.8 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
1,885 tons
Highest 24%
Presence Resurrection Life Center
7370 W Talcott Ave
Senior Living Community
8.8 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
789 tons
Lowest 45%
Kennedy HS / Kinzie ES -CPS
(CPS)
6325 W 56th St
K-12 School
8.8 kg/sqft
Highest 20%
2,047 tons
Highest 22%
Page 51 of 226 (Building #751 to #765)

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