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 โAs of 2016, this list includes all commercial, institutional, and residential buildings larger than 50,000 square feet.โ 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.) |
---|---|---|---|
Crown Hall
๐ท
๐ฐ๏ธ
(Illinois Tech)
3360 S State Street
| College/University | 555.1 kg/sqft | 30,139 tons |
Digital Lakeside
๐ท
๐ฐ๏ธ
350 E Cermak
| Data Center | 142.1 kg/sqft | 173,706 tons |
Hyde Park West Apartments
๐ฐ๏ธ
5325 S. Cottage Grove Ave
| Multifamily Housing | 126.0 kg/sqft | 18,454 tons |
CoreSite
๐จ
๐ท
427 S LaSalle St
| Data Center | 114.8 kg/sqft #1 Highest
| 18,365 tons #19 Highest
|
Digital Printer's Row
๐จ
๐ท
600 S Federal St
| Data Center | 93.5 kg/sqft #2 Highest
| 17,324 tons #21 Highest
|
Herman Hall
๐ท
๐ฐ๏ธ
(Illinois Tech)
3241 S Federal Street
| College/University | 88.9 kg/sqft | 9,884 tons |
Shop & Save Market - Nagle
๐ท
๐ฐ๏ธ
6312 N Nagle Ave
| Supermarket/Grocery Store | 83.7 kg/sqft | 5,584 tons |
Life Sciences Research Building
๐ฐ๏ธ
(Illinois Tech)
35 W 34th Street
| College/University | 80.7 kg/sqft | 8,317 tons |
6045 Kenwood Building
๐จ
๐ท
(UChicago)
6045 S Kenwood Ave
| Office | 79.7 kg/sqft #3 Highest
| 7,900 tons
Highest 4%
|
Salem Baptist Church of Chicago
๐จ
10909 S Cottage Grove Ave
| Worship Facility | 78.0 kg/sqft #4 Highest
| 7,160 tons
Highest 4%
|
Keating Hall
๐ท
๐ฐ๏ธ
(Illinois Tech)
3040 S Wabash Avenue
| College/University | 69.5 kg/sqft | 3,694 tons |
601 W Polk Street
๐จ
601 W Polk Street
| Data Center | 62.2 kg/sqft #5 Highest
| 6,467 tons
Highest 5%
|
Searle Chemistry Laboratory
๐จ
๐ท
(UChicago)
5735 S Ellis Ave
| Laboratory | 49.0 kg/sqft #6 Highest
| 4,193 tons
Highest 9%
|
BSLC
๐ฐ๏ธ
924 E 57th St
| Laboratory | 47.2 kg/sqft | 8,296 tons |
WGN Studios
๐จ
2501 W BRADLEY PL
| Office | 46.8 kg/sqft #7 Highest
| 3,068 tons
Highest 14%
|
Data Source: Chicago Energy Benchmarking Data