Energy benchmarking · Building type
Which kinds of Chicago buildings earn four energy stars?
Chicago posts a zero-to-four-star energy rating on every large building. Sorted by what the building is used for, the 2023 ratings split sharply.
By BUILDINGChicago editors. Published September 17, 2026. Data: City of Chicago, reporting year 2023, retrieved September 17, 2026.
Short answer: offices. Of 326 rated office buildings in the 2023 data, 41.7% hold four stars and only 8.3% sit at one or one-and-a-half stars. K-12 schools are the mirror image: 13.4% four-star, 42.9% at the bottom two steps. Across all 2,521 rated buildings the four-star share is 30.5%.
What the stars measure
The Chicago Energy Rating System, in place since 2019, turns each covered building's annual benchmarking report into a placard. The City says properties in compliance "will receive between one and four stars," based on their 1-100 ENERGY STAR score; properties that cannot get an ENERGY STAR score are rated on source energy use per square foot against national medians for the same property type. A building that does not report gets zero stars. Because an ENERGY STAR score compares a building with similar buildings nationally, a four-star school and a four-star office are each good for their own kind, not equal in raw energy use. Who has to report is set out on the City's energy benchmarking page: buildings of 50,000 square feet and up that meet the ordinance's criteria.
Four-star share by building type
Types with at least 20 rated buildings in 2023. The remaining 182 rated buildings are spread over 32 smaller types and are not shown.
- Office n=32641.7%
- College/University n=7337.0%
- Multifamily housing n=1,33835.3%
- Strip mall n=2532.0%
- Retail store n=3721.6%
- Supermarket/grocery n=4221.4%
- Hotel n=7619.7%
- Residence hall/dorm n=2015.0%
- K-12 school n=35013.4%
- Senior living n=5211.5%
Share of rated buildings at exactly four stars, 2023. Grey bars fall below 25%. Source: City of Chicago Energy Benchmarking dataset, our computation.
| Building type | Rated | Mean stars | 4 stars | 1 or 1.5 stars | Median ENERGY STAR score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Office | 326 | 3.24 | 41.7% | 8.3% | 74 |
| College/University | 73 | 2.68 | 37.0% | 21.9% | none reported |
| Multifamily housing | 1,338 | 2.90 | 35.3% | 20.3% | 64 |
| Strip mall | 25 | 2.92 | 32.0% | 8.0% | none reported |
| Retail store | 37 | 2.80 | 21.6% | 18.9% | 65 |
| Supermarket/grocery | 42 | 2.83 | 21.4% | 21.4% | 65 |
| Hotel | 76 | 2.52 | 19.7% | 30.3% | 55 |
| Residence hall/dormitory | 20 | 2.80 | 15.0% | 15.0% | 69 |
| K-12 school | 350 | 2.21 | 13.4% | 42.9% | 42 |
| Senior living community | 52 | 2.38 | 11.5% | 36.5% | 44 |
| All rated buildings | 2,521 | 2.77 | 30.5% | 23.3% | 62 |
Median ENERGY STAR score is taken over the rated buildings in each type that report a score. Mean stars count half stars as .5.
What stands out
Offices are the best-rated large buildings in the city
Offices have the highest mean rating (3.24 stars) and the highest median ENERGY STAR score (74) of any type with enough buildings to compare. Fewer than one office in twelve sits at the bottom of the scale.
Schools and senior housing carry the low ratings
K-12 schools are the third-largest group, with 350 rated buildings, and their median ENERGY STAR score of 42 sits below 50, the score the City's report describes as national median performance. Senior living communities (median 44) are the only other type in the table below 50; hotels (55) come next. Because the score already compares each building with similar buildings nationally, a low score here is not just the cost of being a school; it means these buildings use more energy than comparable schools elsewhere.
Multifamily sets the citywide number
Multifamily housing is 1,338 of the 2,521 rated buildings, or 53.1%, so the citywide four-star share mostly reflects apartment and condo towers. The City's 2022-2023 benchmarking report makes the same point in energy terms: in 2023, multifamily represented "45% of the total sq. ft., and 47% of total site energy use of all analyzed properties."
Colleges are rated a different way
None of the 73 rated college and university buildings has an ENERGY STAR score in the dataset, and neither do the 25 strip malls. Their stars come from the City's second route, energy use per square foot against national medians for the type, so their shares are not measured on quite the same yardstick as offices or apartments.
How this compares with the City's own summary
The City's report gives a median ENERGY STAR score of 63 for all properties it analyzed in 2023. Our median over rated buildings that report a score is 62. The two are computed over different sets of buildings (the City analyzed 2,516 properties; we count 2,240 rated buildings with a score), so read them as close, not identical.
Method. We downloaded every row of the City of Chicago's Chicago Energy Benchmarking dataset for data year 2023, the latest reporting year it contains, on September 17, 2026 (3,438 rows; the City last updated the rows on February 5, 2025). "Rated" means the row's reporting status is Submitted and it carries a Chicago Energy Rating of 1 to 4 stars, half stars included: 2,521 buildings. The 63 submitted rows with a zero or blank rating are left out of the rating shares. "Four-star share" is the percent of rated buildings at exactly 4 stars. Every figure on this page was computed by us from that download.
Building types are the dataset's "primary property type" field as reported by owners.