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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.)
ACE Technical Charter High School
🕰️
(CPS)
5400 S State St
K-12 School
0.9 kg/sqft
59 tons
PowellStBrdg-CPS
🕰️
(CPS)
7765 S COLES AVE
K-12 School
0.8 kg/sqft
80 tons
318 West Adams Commercial Condo Assoc.
🏆
318 W Adams St
Office
0.8 kg/sqft
#5 Lowest in Chicago*
133 tons
#16 Lowest in Chicago*
The Chicago Theatre
🏆
175 N State St
Performing Arts
0.8 kg/sqft
#5 Lowest in Chicago*
538 tons
Lowest 29%
6160 N Cicero
🕰️
6160 N CICERO AVE
Office
0.8 kg/sqft
51 tons
Market Place at Six Corners 10361
🏆
4612 - 4730 W Irving Park Rd
Other - Mall
0.8 kg/sqft
#5 Lowest in Chicago*
91 tons
#7 Lowest in Chicago*
Headquarters Q12380
🕰️
225 W Randolph
Office
0.8 kg/sqft
761 tons
Dugan-CPS
🕰️
(CPS)
4541 S Wood St
K-12 School
0.7 kg/sqft
62 tons
SouthLoopBrn-CPS
🕰️
(CPS)
1915 S FEDERAL ST
K-12 School
0.7 kg/sqft
148 tons
Cambria Hotel
🕰️
32 W RANDOLPH ST
Hotel
0.7 kg/sqft
166 tons
1830 N WINCHESTER AVE
🏆
1830 N WINCHESTER AVE
Multifamily Housing
0.7 kg/sqft
#3 Lowest in Chicago*
47 tons
#2 Lowest in Chicago*
811 E. 46th
🕰️
811 E. 46th St
Multifamily Housing
0.6 kg/sqft
44 tons
Belding Earl-CPS
🕰️
(CPS)
4209 W Irving Park Rd
K-12 School
0.5 kg/sqft
37 tons
U.S. Cellular Plaza - 8420 _ Goby LLC
🏆
8420 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Office
0.5 kg/sqft
#2 Lowest in Chicago*
103 tons
#10 Lowest in Chicago*
2255 S MICHIGAN AVE
🕰️
2255 S MICHIGAN AVE
Office
0.5 kg/sqft
22 tons
Page 225 of 226 (Building #3361 to #3375)

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