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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
๐Ÿ“ฐ $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! ๐ŸŽ‰

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 โ€œAs 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.)
Rush University Medical Center
๐Ÿšจ
1653 W Congress Pkwy
Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)
23.7 kg/sqft
#36 Highest
92,454 tons
#2 Highest
Holy Cross Hospial
๐Ÿšฉ
2701 W 68th St
Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)
23.7 kg/sqft
#36 Highest
9,723 tons
Highest 2%
MB Ice Arena
๐Ÿšฉ
1801 W Jackson Blvd
Ice/Curling Rink
23.5 kg/sqft
#39 Highest
2,991 tons
Highest 14%
Jones Laboratory
๐Ÿšฉ
(UChicago)
5747 S Ellis Ave
Laboratory
23.5 kg/sqft
#39 Highest
1,699 tons
Highest 27%
26 N Halsted St
๐Ÿšฉ
26 N Halsted St
Office
23.3 kg/sqft
#40 Highest
1,335 tons
Highest 36%
Physics Research Center
๐Ÿšฉ
933 E 56th Street
Laboratory
23.0 kg/sqft
#42 Highest
1,542 tons
Highest 30%
Jewel Osco, 02502-Clybourn & Wrightwood
๐Ÿšฉ
2550 N Clybourn St
Supermarket/Grocery Store
23.0 kg/sqft
#42 Highest
1,958 tons
Highest 24%
University Club of Chicago
๐Ÿšฉ
76 E Monroe St
Hotel
22.8 kg/sqft
#44 Highest
3,278 tons
Highest 12%
832 854 W FULTON MARKET
๐Ÿšฉ
832 854 W FULTON MARKET
Mixed Use Property
22.8 kg/sqft
#44 Highest
2,201 tons
Highest 21%
53100516--CHICAGO
๐Ÿ•ฐ๏ธ
2112 N ASHLAND AVE
Supermarket/Grocery Store
22.8 kg/sqft
1,825 tons
Provident Hospital
๐Ÿšฉ
500 E 51st St
Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)
22.6 kg/sqft
#45 Highest
8,449 tons
Highest 3%
Belmont and Central; A&G Fresh Market
๐Ÿ•ฐ๏ธ
5630 W Belmont Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
22.6 kg/sqft
1,220 tons
Center on Halsted
๐Ÿšฉ
3656 N Halsted St
Mixed Use Property
22.5 kg/sqft
#46 Highest
2,335 tons
Highest 19%
Page Building
๐Ÿšฉ
177 N State St
Office
22.3 kg/sqft
#47 Highest
1,183 tons
Highest 39%
Fosco Park
๐Ÿ•ฐ๏ธ
1312 S Racine Ave
Other - Recreation
22.2 kg/sqft
1,344 tons
Page 6 of 226 (Building #76 to #90)

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