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

Ma, Jia-Jun; Liu, Liqiu; Su, Bin; Xie, Bai-Chen

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.11.001

Cited by 25 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Data from comparable geographical areas (BPIE, 2011) report that, on average, more than 80% of existing buildings were built before 1990, and half of those before 1960. These numbers indicate average lifespans for buildings of at least 60-90 years, in line with those reported by Ma et al (2015). If we are to bring about circularity in buildings, focusing on the new ones will not suffice.…”

Section: Building Research and Circular Economiessupporting

confidence: 81%

Circular economy for the built environment: A research framework

Pomponi

Moncaster

2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

687

349

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The built environment puts major pressure on the natural environment; its role in transitioning to a circular economy (CE) is therefore fundamental. However, current CE research tends to focus either on the macro-scale, such as eco-parks, or the micro-scale, such as manufactured products, with the risk of ignoring the additional impacts and potentials at the meso-scale of individual buildings. This article sets out to unpack the fundamental defining dimensions of a CE and frame them for CE studies for the built environment. A critical literature review forms the basis for identifying and framing such fundamental dimensions. Our contribution highlights the key roles of interdisciplinary research and of both bottom-up and top-down initiatives in facilitating the transition to 'circular buildings'. The frame for reference has been used to capture current discourse on the sustainability of the built environment and has proved to be a valuable tool to cluster existing initiatives and highlight missing links for interdisciplinary endeavours. The article represents a contribution to the theoretical foundations of CE research in the built environment and a stepping stone to shape future research initiatives.

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Section: Building Research and Circular Economiessupporting

confidence: 81%

Circular economy for the built environment: A research framework

Pomponi

Moncaster

2017

Journal of Cleaner Production

687

349

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“…Interestingly, this aspect from the mitigation strategies analysis clashes with the assumed service life of buildings in the LCA literature reviewed, in which, for the vast majority of the articles, buildings are assessed for a design life of 50 years. However the evidence around us says otherwise; in the UK, for instance, 80% of the buildings that will be standing in 2050 have already been built [127] and the average lifespan is 132 years [114].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Embodied carbon mitigation and reduction in the built environment – What does the evidence say?

Pomponi

Moncaster

2016

Journal of Environmental Management

253

117

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Of all industrial sectors, the built environment puts the most pressure on the natural environment, and in spite of significant efforts the International Energy Agency suggests that buildings-related emissions are on track to double by 2050. Whilst operational energy efficiency continues to receive significant attention by researchers, a less well-researched area is the assessment of embodied carbon in the built environment in order to understand where the greatest opportunities for its mitigation and reduction lie. This article approaches the body of academic knowledge on strategies to tackle embodied carbon (EC) and uses a systematic review of the available evidence to answer the following research question: how should we mitigate and reduce EC in the built environment? 102 journal articles have been reviewed systematically in the fields of embodied carbon mitigation and reduction, and life cycle assessment. In total, 17 mitigation strategies have been identified from within the existing literature which have been discussed through a meta-analysis on available data. Results reveal that no single mitigation strategy alone seems able to tackle the problem; rather, a pluralistic approach is necessary. The use of materials with lower EC, better design, an increased reuse of ECintensive materials, and stronger policy drivers all emerged as key elements for a quicker transition to a low carbon built environment. The meta-analysis on 77 LCAs also shows an extremely incomplete and short-sighted approach to life cycle studies. Most studies only assess the manufacturing stages, often completely overlooking impacts occurring during the occupancy stage and at the end of life of the building. The LCA research community have the responsibility to address such shortcomings and work towards more complete and meaningful assessments.

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“…This is why we propose a method to try to split out the buildings related energy consumption mixed in other sectors. 1 Sources: 2003 data (Long, 2005;Zhu, 2005), 2004 data (Cai et al, 2009;Yang and Jiang, 2007data(IEA, 2007Long, 2005;Zhou and Lin, 2008), 2006 data (Jiang and Yang, 2006;Lin et al, 2009b;Wang, 2009;Yang, 2009), 2007data(IEA, 2007Li and Yao, 2009;Xia et al, 2014;Yang and Jiang, 2007), 2008 data (He et al, 2014;Kong et al, 2012;Zhang et al, 2008), 2009 data (Wu and Long, 2009), 2010 data (Cao et al, 2017;IEA, 2013IEA, , 2012, 2011 data (Du et al, 2014;Xia et al, 2014), 2012 data(MOHURD, 2011; Peng et al, 2015), 2013 data(Peng et al, 2015; Wang and Sun, 2013), 2014 data (Xia et al, 2014), 2015 data (Ma et al, 2015).…”

Section: Different Interpretations and Scopes Of Building Energy Consmentioning

confidence: 99%

China's energy consumption in the building sector: A Statistical Yearbook-Energy Balance Sheet based splitting method

Huo

Hong

Zhang

et al. 2018

Journal of Cleaner Production

239

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China's energy consumption in the building sector (BEC) is not counted as a separate type of energy consumption, but divided and mixed in other sectors in China's statistical system. This led to the lack of historical data on China's BEC. Moreover, previous researches' shortages such as unsystematic research on BEC, various estimation methods with complex calculation process, and difficulties in data acquisition resulted in "heterogeneous" of current BEC in China. Aiming to these deficiencies, this study proposes a set of China building energy consumption calculation method (CBECM) by splitting out the building related energy consumption mixed in other sectors in the composition of China Statistical Yearbook-Energy Balance Sheet. Then, China's BEC from 2000 to 2014 are estimated using CBECM and compared with other studies. Results show that, from 2000 to 2014, China's BEC increased 1.7 times, rising from 301 to 814 million tons of standard coal consumed, with the BEC percentage of total energy consumption stayed relatively stable between 17.7% and 20.3%. By comparison, we find that our results are reliable and the CBECM has the following advantages over other methods: data source is authoritative, calculation process is concise, and it is easy to obtain time series data on BEC etc. The CBECM is particularly suitable for the provincial government to calculate the local BEC, even in the circumstance with statistical yearbook available only.

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

Cited by 25 publications

References 32 publications

Circular economy for the built environment: A research framework

Circular economy for the built environment: A research framework

Embodied carbon mitigation and reduction in the built environment – What does the evidence say?

China's energy consumption in the building sector: A Statistical Yearbook-Energy Balance Sheet based splitting method

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