Skip to Main Content

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.)
Webster -CPS
🕰️
(CPS)
4055 W Arthington St
K-12 School
6.0 kg/sqft
359 tons
Eric Solorio HS -CPS
(CPS)
5410 S St Louis Ave
K-12 School
6.0 kg/sqft
Lowest 42%
1,276 tons
Highest 37%
Kelvyn Park HS -CPS
(CPS)
4343 W Wrightwood Ave
K-12 School
6.0 kg/sqft
Lowest 42%
1,121 tons
Highest 41%
Haugan Magnet, Helge A -CPS
(CPS)
4540 N Hamlin Ave
K-12 School
6.0 kg/sqft
Lowest 42%
822 tons
Lowest 47%
Bond Elementary -CPS
🕰️
(CPS)
7050 S May St
K-12 School
6.0 kg/sqft
624 tons
Beaubien Elementary -CPS
(CPS)
5025 N Laramie Ave
K-12 School
6.0 kg/sqft
Lowest 42%
706 tons
Lowest 40%
Calmeca Fine Arts -CPS
(CPS)
3456 W 38th Street
K-12 School
6.0 kg/sqft
Lowest 42%
652 tons
Lowest 37%
Holden Elementary -CPS
(CPS)
1104 W 31st St
K-12 School
6.0 kg/sqft
Lowest 42%
603 tons
Lowest 34%
Pershing West -CPS
(CPS)
3200 S Calumet Ave
K-12 School
6.0 kg/sqft
Lowest 42%
776 tons
Lowest 44%
Lovett Elementary -CPS
(CPS)
6333 W Bloomingdale Ave
K-12 School
6.0 kg/sqft
Lowest 42%
510 tons
Lowest 27%
South Shore ES
🕰️
(CPS)
1404 E 70th St
K-12 School
6.0 kg/sqft
459 tons
Hawthorne Elementary Academy -CPS
(CPS)
3319 N Clifton Ave
K-12 School
6.0 kg/sqft
Lowest 42%
425 tons
Lowest 19%
Bronzeville Charter, Hartigan - CPS
(CPS)
8 W Root St
K-12 School
6.0 kg/sqft
Lowest 42%
385 tons
Lowest 15%
4950 Powhatan Building Corp.
🕰️
4950 S Chicago Beach Dr
Multifamily Housing
6.0 kg/sqft
1,013 tons
314 W Superior St
314 W Superior St
Office
6.0 kg/sqft
Lowest 42%
653 tons
Lowest 37%
Page 131 of 226 (Building #1951 to #1965)

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