CO₂ emissions of China's commercial and residential buildings: Evidence and reduction policy

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.