Modelling future trends of annual embodied energy of urban residential building stock in China
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Authors
Zhou, W.
Moncaster, A.
O’Neill, E.
Reiner, D.
Wang, X.
Guthrie, P.
Publication Date
2022-03-31Series
Cambridge Working Papers in Economics
Publisher
Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
Type
Working Paper
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Zhou, W., Moncaster, A., O’Neill, E., Reiner, D., Wang, X., & Guthrie, P. (2022). Modelling future trends of annual embodied energy of urban residential building stock in China. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.83970
Abstract
China is the largest driver of growth in the global building sector. The longstanding construction boom across China has generated a massive flow of materials with significant associated embodied energy consumption and carbon emissions. Despite the serious implications for global emissions, there exist a very limited number of macro-level studies on embodied energy of Chinese buildings, with even fewer exploring future scenarios. There is therefore little in the way of an evidence base to offer policy makers. We develop a probabilistic model to forecast the possible trajectories of embodied energy of residential buildings over the medium to long term in the Chinese urban context. Our results provide clear evidence to substantiate the importance of embodied energy of new construction, which we find to be over 0.3 times the operational energy of existing stock between 2010 and 2018. If current trajectories are followed, embodied energy is likely to peak around 2027, with a 95% credible interval ranging from 87 to 283 Mtce (61 to 198 Mtoe) and a mean of 170 Mtce (119 Mtoe). We show that building lifetime has a substantial impact on future annual and cumulative embodied energy. Our findings reinforce the need to take a whole-life perspective to formulate policies addressing building energy as part of China's efforts to meet the announced overarching target of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.
Keywords
Urban residential buildings, embodied energy, dynamic stock turnover, probabilistic model, material intensity, policy implications
Identifiers
CWPE2223
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.83970
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/336549
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