Large building energy use

Large buildings in Chicago must report their energy use

The City of Chicago requires the owners of certain types of large buildings in Chicago to report their natural gas and electricity use through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager. The Chicago City Council passed an ordinance requiring the reporting of energy usage and benchmarking for all non-industrial buildings greater than 50,000 square feet. The goal of the requirement is to encourage building owners to make improvements that boost energy efficiency.

How do I get started?

If you own a building covered by the new reporting requirement, complete our information request form so we can provide you with your building's natural gas use data. You will need to provide the following information:

  • The address of the building.
  • Your name as manager or owner of the building, along with an email address to which we can send your building's energy information.
  • The meter number for each of the natural gas meters at your building.
  • If your building has four or fewer tenants with Peoples Gas accounts, you also must submit a Benchmarking Customer Information Release form signed by each tenant/Peoples Gas account holder.

What are the next steps?

After you complete the information request form, we will aggregate the monthly natural gas usage for your building using the accurate meter numbers which you have submitted. After we process this information, we will send you an email with:

  • The aggregated monthly usage for the previous calendar year.
  • The identification of the building.
  • The number of accounts aggregated by Peoples Gas.

Note:

  • No individual customer usage information or account numbers will be reported.
  • Gathering this information is a manual process and will take time to complete. We encourage you to request your information soon.
  • You must provide complete and correct meter numbers for your building. Failure to provide such information will result in incomplete aggregate energy use information for your building.