Characterization of Carbon Emissions from the Construction Activities: A Case Study of Shenzhen, China

Abstract

Construction industry is one of the intensive energy-consuming sectors, which will inevitably lead a great amount of carbon emissions. However, most researchers only focused on the carbon emissions at use stage of buildings. There is relatively little work to look at the emissions from the construction activities themselves. Shenzhen city, as a rapidly developing flagship megacity in South China, has been selected as a demonstration to analyze its emission from construction activities. Specifically, carbon emissions from construction activities, including material use, construction processes of buildings in the past few years, have been investigated to obtain the fundamental data to make a contribution analysis in Shenzhen. The results show that carbon emissions from material use is the largest contributor during construction activities, which has caused 132.4 million tonnes in 2013, and carbon emissions of cement use has accounted for 53.2% of all materials use. To summarize, the results are beneficial to figure out environmental impact from the construction activities. The outcomes are also important from a policy standpoint and low-carbon technologies substitution perspective.