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.
The City Of Chicago failed to collect $30 million in potential fines from the building benchmarking ordinance, reducing transparency and accountability.
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!
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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Loyola Park
🕰️
1230 W Greenleaf Ave
| Other - Recreation | 21.2 kg/sqft | 1,190 tons |
Jewel Osco, 03721-Archer & Austin
6107 S Archer Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 21.0 kg/sqft
Highest 2%
| 1,054 tons
Highest 44%
|
Accelerator/High Energy Physics
📷
(UChicago)
5604 - 5620 S Ellis Ave
| Laboratory | 20.9 kg/sqft
Highest 2%
| 1,231 tons
Highest 38%
|
600 618 S WABASH AVE
🕰️
600 618 S WABASH AVE
| Residence Hall/Dormitory | 20.9 kg/sqft | 1,993 tons |
70800789 -- 47th ~ Damen
🕰️
4620 S Damen Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 20.8 kg/sqft | 1,590 tons |
Dunning Square
6408 - 6450 W Irving Park Rd
| Strip Mall | 20.8 kg/sqft
Highest 2%
| 2,665 tons
Highest 16%
|
Goldblatt Hospital
🕰️
5840 S Ellis Ave
| Laboratory | 20.5 kg/sqft | 2,718 tons |
Scientific Games-3401 California
🕰️
3401 California
| Office | 20.5 kg/sqft | 2,470 tons |
Community First Medical Center
🕰️
5645 West Addison St
| Hospital (General Medical & Surgical) | 20.4 kg/sqft | 7,080 tons |
Jewel Food Store
4734 N Cumberland Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 20.3 kg/sqft
Highest 2%
| 1,071 tons
Highest 43%
|
Max Palevsky Residential Commons/Bartlett Commons
1101 E 56th St
| Social/Meeting Hall | 20.1 kg/sqft
Highest 2%
| 1,389 tons
Highest 34%
|
Wyler
🕰️
5837 S Maryland Ave
| Laboratory | 20.1 kg/sqft | 4,182 tons |
Bethany Methodist Communities
🕰️
5025 N Paulina St
| Hospital (General Medical & Surgical) | 19.9 kg/sqft | 3,474 tons |
216 West Jackson LLC
🕰️
216 W Jackson Blvd
| Office | 19.9 kg/sqft | 3,630 tons |
Swedish Covenant Hospital Campus
🚩
5145 N California Ave
| Mixed Use Property | 19.8 kg/sqft
Highest 2%
| 15,863 tons #27 Highest
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data