An independent tool for viewing City of Chicago building data
According to the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan, a whopping 69% of Chicago's emissions come from buildings, making it our biggest challenge and our biggest opportunity as a city to tackle change. At Electrify Chicago, we want to showcase some of the best and worst performing buildings in the city using publicly available data and manual annotations to add building photographs and label multi-building owners like universities.
You can start by looking at Chicago's buildings with the highest greenhouse gas intensity - this means that they use the most energy when adjusted per unit of square foot, so big buildings could actually 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.
This data is also from 2021, but when new benchmark data is available, we'll update the site.
Property Name / address | Primary Property Type |
Greenhouse Gas Intensity (kg CO2 eq./sqft) |
Total Greenhouse Emissions (metric tons CO2 eq.) |
---|---|---|---|
Swartzberg House
3101 W Touhy Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 487 tons
Lowest 26%
|
St. Sabina Elders Village
1222 W 79th St
| Multifamily Housing | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 449 tons
Lowest 22%
|
The Pierre Condominium
2100 N Lincoln Park West
| Multifamily Housing | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 1,104 tons
Highest 41%
|
3900 W Bryn Mawr
3900 W BRYN MAWR AVE
| Multifamily Housing | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 352 tons
Lowest 13%
|
1420 North Lake Shore Drive
1420 N Lake Shore Dr
| Multifamily Housing | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 938 tons
Highest 47%
|
Ole A Thorp Elementary Scholastic Academy
(CPS)
6024 W Warwick Ave
| K-12 School | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 542 tons
Lowest 30%
|
Joseph E Gary Elementary School
(CPS)
3740 W 31st St
| K-12 School | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 766 tons
Lowest 45%
|
Jean Baptiste Beaubien Elementary School
(CPS)
5025 N Laramie Ave
| K-12 School | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 687 tons
Lowest 40%
|
William H Seward Communication Arts Academy ES
(CPS)
4600 S Hermitage Ave
| K-12 School | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 439 tons
Lowest 21%
|
Grover Cleveland Elementary School
(CPS)
3121 W Byron St
| K-12 School | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 561 tons
Lowest 32%
|
Charles S Deneen Elementary School
(CPS)
7240 S Wabash Ave
| K-12 School | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 512 tons
Lowest 28%
|
Charles Gates Dawes Elementary School
(CPS)
3810 W 81st Place
| K-12 School | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 524 tons
Lowest 29%
|
Mount Greenwood Elementary School
(CPS)
10841 S Homan Ave
| K-12 School | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 650 tons
Lowest 38%
|
990 West Fullerton Building
990 W Fullerton Ave
| College/University | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 532 tons
Lowest 29%
|
444 North Wells Street
444 N Wells St
| Office | 5.8 kg/sqft
Lowest 37%
| 423 tons
Lowest 20%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data