Exploring the critical factors and appropriate polices for reducing energy consumption of China's urban civil building sector

The embodied and operating energy consumption of the civil building sector accounts for more than 30% of the national consumption. It is of great significance to probe the energy saving potential of the building sector and to explore the critical factors responsible for its energy saving practice, which may greatly benefit carbon emission reduction in the process of urbanization. In this paper, we develop a series of formulations to calculate both embodied and operating energy based on hybrid energy input-output model. Taking 2011-2050 as the study period, we combined the embodied and operating energy and designed six scenarios to comprehensively quantify the impacts of three factors: new building floor areas, energy efficiency standards and its implementation rate on the energy saving potential. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis was conducted to dissect the influence of the corresponding factors. The results show that improved standards and less new building floor areas will be the most effective ways to reduce energy consumption and that the best energy saving practice can save up to 20 billion tons of coal equivalent (tce) during the study period. The focus of policy reforms may be varied according to the times and regions. Energy saving technology development and more emphasis on key areas will reduce building energy consumption significantly in the short term, while household lifestyle changes, as well as improved building energy efficiency, should be given a higher priority in the long run.