Gas rates might be rising soon in Chicago, but did you know a lot of big buildings in Chicago are already all-electric? They won't be feeling these rate hikes, and are reducing emissions and keeping our air cleaner!
electrifychicago.net/all-electric
An Electrify Chicago Data Centers page showing 7 buildings in the data using 1.7 billion kBTU of energy, equivalent to 480 median buildings citywide
Data Centers in Chicago use a LOT of electricity, and we're adding some stats to show you just how much - in this case, 7 data centers use as much energy as 480 median large Chicago buildings!
More data coming soon to electrifychicago.net/property-typ...
A screenshot of Electrify Chicago showing Building Owners on the homepage, including CPS with 452 buildings, University of Chicago with 28 buildings, and Illinois Tech with 19
You can now find building owners on the ElectrifyChicago.net homepage! We want to make it really quick and easy for folks to see Chicago's biggest property owners and their emissions - did any of these surprise you? 👀
A Multifamily Housing property type page, showing 1,710 buildings with a 1.9 million tons of total emissions, and an avg ghg intensity of 5.9
A Data Centers property type page, showing 7 buildings, with 273k total emissions and 83.6 avg GHG intensity
We're cooking up something new - a property type overview page!
We want to make it easier to see stats among properties of the same type, and to see some quick images of what those buildings look like. Is there anything you'd like to see? 👀
And you can read the full plan here:
www.chicago.gov/city/en/site...
Screenshot showing a page from the Chicago Central Area Plan, 2045, with a highlighted section under "Accelerate building decarbonization" that says "Expand the city's energy benchmarking program for buildings by reducing the threshold for required energy reports from 50,000-square-foot buildings to 25,000-square-foot buildings."
We were excited to see energy benchmarking mentioned in the Chicago Central Area Plan 2045, and to see that they want to expand it to more buildings!
Do you know any buildings that would start reporting with this new threshold?
Chicago's budget season is still underway - and we're excited to see this op-ed in Crain's talking about the multi-million dollar opportunity of enforcing energy benchmarking!
www.chicagobusiness.com/opinion/chic...
And special thanks @stevevance.net for suggesting this simple improvement! We're always looking to make the benchmarking data easier to digest
We've made some updates to our fines breakdown, so you can see how many big Chicago buildings didn't report in each year! Did you know in 2019, it was over one thousand?! 🤯
Check out the info at electrifychicago.net/fines-breakdown, and let us know if you have more suggestions or data questions!
So who's emailed their alders? Have any of you heard back? 👀
"The city doesn't enforce the fines"?? I mean what the hell are we doing here folks, it's not like the city is swimming in revenue
In the last year it was over 500, and there were thousands of incidents of non compliance over the years of the ordinance! We'll work on adding it to our fine breakdown page:
electrifychicago.net/fines-breakd...
We were shocked too! It's an easy win for climate and city revenue in one stroke
Chicago's largest buildings are breaking emissions laws, costing the city nearly $35 million in uncollected fines! Buildings over 50,000 sqft are required to report their emissions, but thousands haven't, and have faced none of the penalties.
Contact your alder to help at electrifychicago.net/act
The Electrify Chicago page for Ward 42, showing that it has 370 tagged buildings, with 1.2 million in total emissions
We keep working on new tools to understand Chicago's buildings, and this past week, a contributor added stats to our ward pages!
Have you wondered how many buildings are in your ward, and if their better than average? Find you ward at electrifychicago.net/wards
Find universities and agencies by going to our website's large owner page! Did you find anything surprising? 👀
electrifychicago.net/large-owners
"New Feature - Building Owner Stats! We've got top-level stats for all our building owners - including a breakdown of grades, total emissions, and more! " Overlayed on a screenshot of Illinois Tech, showing 19 tagged buildings with 132k tons CO2e total emissions, and an average GHG intensity of 55.5 kg CO2e/sqft, 9x the median building
"Did you see anything that surprised you about a building owner?" Overlayed over a screenshot of DePaul's building owner page, showing 25 tagged buildings and 36k total emissions, with avg GHG intensity of 10.2 kg CO2e/sqft, 2x the median building
Some universities and agencies own dozens of buildings in Chicago, so we made it easier to understand these large owners and their emissions! Now you can see a breakdown of the grades their buildings get, the total square footage of their buildings, and a whole lot more.
A Google screenshot showing a search for "Marina Towers Emissions" with an AI overview showing stats that we render
Good News - Electrify Chicago is doing great in search! If you're interested in a building's emissions, we're going to come up.
Bad News - Google is stealing our work for their AI summary 🫠
Support us by sharing our site directly to help push back against our robot overlords 🤖
A screenshot of 320 South Canal on Electrify Chicago, a tall glass office building, and CH1 - Chicago DC1, a large warehouse looking data center, with overlayed text that says "Imagery for New Buildings! Whether it's a brand new all-electric office building..." on the left and "...or a massive data- center, we want to show you info about our biggest buildings!" on the right
A week ago, we updated our site to show you the latest building data, highlighting some brand new buildings. Now, we've added imagery, so you can recognize these properties and see what they look like! What buildings do you find most interesting or surprising?
And you can find the full list of all electric buildings right here!
electrifychicago.net/biggest-gas-...
Electrify Chicago: New Feature - Badges for All Electric Buildings! Find the buildings that are already gas-free, from individual building pages or building tables! There's 135 all-electric buildings already! Find them at electrifychicago.net
Ever wonder which of Chicago's iconic are already all-electric? Now you can find out at a glance!
We've added new badges and a lightning icon to highlight all 135 all-electric buildings on Electrify Chicago. Are there any buildings you didn't know were all electric?
Welcome to the Mondadnock Building, which we gave an A grade! The Mondadnock was one of the first skyscrapers and six-foot thick brick walls, which are load-bearing! This helps it be very efficient, and have one of the lowest emissions intensities in the whole city! At the bottom right is a report card that says Overall Grade A, Emissions Intensity (50%) A, Energy Mix (40%) - C, and Consistent Reporting (10%) A
Click to reveal the answer below. Did you get it right?!
A photo of a 16 story brick building in downtown Chicago, with text that says Guess This Building's Energy Grade! Your clues: Office building, built in 1890, 496,000 sqft, brick costruction. Do you think it got an A, B, C, D, or F? Swipe to check your answer
We've been looking at Chicago's building data for a while, and some buildings surprise you - what do you think this building's grade is?!
Check our reply to check your answer, and leave a comment if you guessed right, or were totally surprised!
A lot of volunteers put a lot of effort into crunching this data, so if you found it interesting, or useful, give us a follow, and share this with a friend! If you have feedback on graphs and analysis that would be helpful to you, let us know that too!
Graphs of Median GHG Intensity and Median GHG Emissions showing them going slowly down, with the former going from 8.3 to 6.5 from 2016 to 2023, while the latter is going from 1,099 tons to 841 tons in the same period
Graphs of Median Electricity Use and Median Fossil Gas use showing them going slowly down, with the former going from 4 million kWh to 3.6 million kWh from 2016 to 2023, while the latter is more wavy, with 5.5 million therms in 2016 and 2023, but low points in 2021 and a high point in 2019
But in more positive news, our brand new citywide stats page (electrifychicago.net/citywide-stats) shows that the overall set of benchmarked buildings has been improving - with slow but noticeable downward trends in emissions, emissions intensity, and electricity use, and fluctuating gas use.
A screenshot of Herman Hall on Electrify Chicago showing a warning of out of date data, and that top-level stats are from 2021, the last full year of reporting
A screenshot of Stuart Building on Electrify Chicago showing a warning of out of date data, and that top-level stats are from 2021, the last full year of reporting
We also still have several building owners who have now been in violation for several years, like @illinoistech.bsky.social, who haven't reported data for the past two years.
Unfortunately, there's also several buildings that stopped reporting - since fines haven't been levied for non-compliance, we expect this trend to continue. One example? The cook county department of corrections!
electrifychicago.net/building/coo...
There's also some older buildings that started reporting for the first time, like the CHI1 Data Center. It's all electric, but has the second highest GHG intensity in the city!
electrifychicago.net/building/ch-...
To start, you can jump into all of this data at our latest updates page (electrifychicago.net/latest-updates). There we can find new buildings, like the all-electric 320 N Canal, aka BMO Tower! Finished in 2021, we can now get a look into its energy use.
electrifychicago.net/building/320...
The Electrify Chicago Latest Updates page, showing that there are 61 new buildings, but 288 stopped reporting, with a net change of -227 buildings, with 2,261 consistent reporters
The new Electrify Chicago citywide stats page, showing the first graph, of Median GHG intensity, which has been gently trending downwards, from 8.3 in 2016 to 6.2 in 2023
We've got the scoop on Chicago's buildings! We've updated Electrify Chicago with the city's latest 2023 data, including analysis of new buildings, the buildings that fell out of compliance, and a new citywide stats page.
🚨 But there's a problem - 288 buildings stopped reporting this year! 🧵
