Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
6699797 Building and Environment 2015 14 Pages PDF
Abstract
This paper provides an assessment of the potential of CO2 mitigation in buildings by conducting an empirical research on the determinants of building energy-related CO2 emissions. The building sector accounts for 30%-50% of CO2 emissions and thus has significant impacts on global warming. This paper fills the research gap by investigating the economic factors that determine energy-related CO2 emissions in China's commercial and residential buildings. Based on provincial data, a three-dimensional LMDI decomposition of building energy-related CO2 emissions into four components is proposed, and includes scale, income, intensity and structure effects. The results suggest that: (i) China's building energy-related CO2 emissions are increasing rapidly; (ii) The improvement in living standards is the leading driving force of the increases in emissions, but its importance diminishes due to energy efficiency improvement and transformation to low-carbon energy structure; (iii) The evolution of China's commercial building energy-related CO2 emissions shows the features of the environmental Kuznets curve; (iv) CO2 emissions would further increase in the developed eastern regions due to large-scale migration from rural to urban areas.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Energy Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
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