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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.)
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
Page 8 of 226 (Building #106 to #120)

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