The City of Chicago recently publicized energy usage data for 1521 commercial properties with floor area 50000 ft(2) (4650 m(2)) or greater for the year 2015. We have cross-referenced the Chicago benchmarking data with the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED project database to identify 132 Chicago properties that were LEED-certified in programs expected to reduce whole building energy use. The numbers of LEED-certified buildings are sufficient for Offices, K-12 Schools, and Multifamily Housing to learn whether these buildings use less energy than do similar conventional buildings in Chicago. For all three building types we find LEED-certified buildings use no less source energy than similar buildings that are not LEED-certified. Further, we find that LEED-certified schools use 17% more source energy than do other schools. For all three building types we find that LEED-certified buildings use roughly 10% less energy on site than comparable conventional buildings. This does not translate into source energy savings because LEED-certified buildings use relatively more electric energy. Finally, when LEED-certified buildings are compared with other newer buildings we find their source energy consumption to be similar. We believe this is the first such study of energy performance for LEED-certified schools. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.