Chicago building performance, from the public record
How Chicago's large buildings actually perform
Every year, roughly 3,600 Chicago buildings of 50,000 square feet and up are required to report their energy use to the City, which turns the numbers into a zero-to-four-star placard. The data is public. We read it and answer the questions building owners, architects, engineers and facility managers ask about it.
The 2023 energy ratings, four ways
All four pages use the City of Chicago's Energy Benchmarking dataset for 2023, the latest reporting year it holds, downloaded September 17, 2026.
Which kinds of Chicago buildings earn four energy stars?
Offices lead, schools and senior housing trail, and apartments set the citywide number.
41.7% vs 13.4%
four-star share, offices vs K-12 schools
Do older Chicago buildings get worse energy ratings?
No. The prewar stock out-rates the 1960s-70s towers, and offices and apartments age in opposite directions.
44.2% vs 23.0%
four-star share, pre-1930 vs 1960-79 apartment buildings
Where in Chicago are the best-rated large buildings?
Seventeen community areas compared, with apartments broken out so the Loop's offices do not hide its housing.
44.3%
four-star share in West Town, the highest of the 17
How many of Chicago's large buildings actually report?
The City's published rate, the dataset's own count, and where non-reporters cluster, kept apart.
82%
2023 reporting rate by count, per the City's report
About this site
From 2013 to 2014 this address was home to BUILDINGChicago, a design and construction expo and conference for the nonresidential building team, run by the publisher of Building Design+Construction and held at the Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza alongside the U.S. Green Building Council Illinois Chapter's Greening the Heartland conference. A 2015 edition, renamed Building the Heartland, was announced and then cancelled.
The expo has ended. Since September 2026 the address has carried a different project for the same audience: plain answers about how Chicago buildings perform, worked out from public data and linked to the sources so every figure can be checked. The expo's own pages are preserved below as they were published.
From the expo archive
- The expo's last homepage, with the 2015 cancellation notice
- BUILDINGChicago 2013 session descriptions
- Greening the Heartland 2013 session descriptions
- 2014 Monday sessions and Tuesday sessions
- 2013 press room and 2015 press room