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Electrify Chicago

According to the 2022 Chicago Climate Action Plan(opens in a new tab), 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.

Chicago Buildings by Greenhouse Gas Intensity

Note: Data only includes large Chicago buildings from 2020

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.

This data is also from 2020, 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.)
Provident Hospital
🚩
500 E 51st St
Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)
25.7 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
9,599 tons
Highest 7%
Jewel Food Store
4734 N Cumberland Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
25.5 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
1,343 tons
Lowest 22%
Saint Anthony Hospital - Main Hospital
2875 W 19th St
Hospital (General Medical & Surgical)
25.5 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
6,096 tons
Highest 12%
Jewel Osco, 03441-Ashland & Wellington
2940 N Ashland Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
25.3 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
1,877 tons
Lowest 44%
Shop & Save Market - Archer
5829 S Archer Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
25.1 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
1,688 tons
Lowest 37%
The Park at Wrigley
1101 W WAVELAND AVE
Office
25.0 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
6,193 tons
Highest 12%
Jewel Osco, 03376-Kinzie & Des Plaines
370 N Desplaines St
Supermarket/Grocery Store
25.0 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
1,628 tons
Lowest 34%
600 N MICHIGAN AVE
600 N MICHIGAN AVE
Retail Store
25.0 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
5,234 tons
Highest 14%
Jewel Osco, 03092-95th & Stony Island
1655 E 95th St
Supermarket/Grocery Store
24.8 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
1,799 tons
Lowest 42%
Dunning Square
6408 - 6450 W Irving Park Rd
Strip Mall
24.8 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
3,191 tons
Highest 28%
Chatham Ridge Shopping Center
112 W 87th St
Supermarket/Grocery Store
24.6 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
1,521 tons
Lowest 31%
NMH Olson Pavilion
(Northwestern)
710 N Fairbanks Ct
Laboratory
24.6 kg/sqft
Highest 5%
4,586 tons
Highest 18%
26 N Halsted St
26 N Halsted St
Office
24.5 kg/sqft
Highest 6%
1,405 tons
Lowest 24%
Jones Laboratory
🏆
(UChicago)
5747 S Ellis Ave
Laboratory
24.0 kg/sqft
Highest 6%
1,737 tons
Lowest 40%
Jewel Osco, 03442-Foster & Pulaski
4042 W Foster Ave
Supermarket/Grocery Store
24.0 kg/sqft
Highest 6%
1,563 tons
Lowest 32%

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