Development of bottom-up model to estimate dynamic carbon emission for city-scale buildings

Abstract

The building sector plays a key role in achieving the goal of carbon neutrality while understanding the carbon emission trend of building stock at the city-level is challenging. This study develops a bottom-up model based on the dynamic material flow principle and urban building energy models. Combined with scenario analysis, this model can be used to predict the dynamic development of the size, composition, energy consumption and carbon emissions of building stock in city-level by 2060. Take Changsha as a case study. Five scenarios were set: baseline scenario, less building stock (LBS) scenario, advanced building standard (ABS) scenario, low power emission factor (LPEF) scenario and synergistic emission reduction (SER) scenario, which consider the reduction potential of the building stock size, power emission factors, building energy standards, and their combinations. The result shows that decreasing power emission factors, controlling the building stock size and improving building energy efficiency standards can reduce carbon emissions by 28.29%, 13.38% and 17.49% in 2060, respectively. When the above three measures are implemented simultaneously, the carbon emissions can be reduced by 47.90% and peak before 2030. Therefore, achieving carbon neutrality in the building sector requires a multi-sectoral effort.