Grappling with Climate Challenge in the Built Environment in China

Abstract

The quality of large-scale urban infrastructure has tremendous implications for long-term energy and environmental security, as it is characterized by long lifetime and irreversibility. Failure to implement energy efficiency in buildings constructed today will result in irreversible carbon lock-in for decades. Currently, buildings account for around one-third of global carbon dioxide CO2 emissions Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change IPCC 2007 . Improvement in buildings’ energy efficiency BEE will play a significant role in global greenhouse gas GHG emissions mitigation over the next decades. Furthermore, BEE improvements can create various co-benefits such as reducing dependency on imported fuels, increased household thermal comfort, improved quality of life, and employment creation. In China, heating, cooling, lighting, and other operations in residential and commercial buildings used 450 million tons of oil equivalent Mtoe energy in terms of primary supply in 2004. This use represented 27.7% of total primary energy demand of all sectors IEA 2006; Jiang et al. 2007 . Energy demand in buildings has been increasing rapidly in recent years. Final energy consumption in the sector jumped 175% from 1990 to 2005 ERI 2007 . Buildings also represent more than one-quarter of the country’s electricity consumption and have subsequent implications for energy-related carbon dioxide and other GHG emissions. Overall, buildings account for around 18% of energy-related carbon emissions in China, amounting to 234 Mt-C per year IEA 2008 .