Shedding light on the efforts into the rehabilitation of a major culprit of carbon emissions: A scientometric analysis of net-zero in the built environment sector

Abstract

Recent global commitments towards net-zero 2050 have resulted in an increased interest within a number of industries. The built environment has been identified as a major culprit contributing to the ongoing complex problem of carbon emissions. In an attempt to reveal the efforts, put into alleviating this challenge, this paper aims to provide a comprehensive, quantitative analysis of the literature on net-zero (energy and GHG emissions) in the built environment over the last two decades. In this study, well-established bibliometric and scientometric techniques are deployed to map the scientific domains by developing and analysing the resulting co-citation and keyword co-occurrence network developed from the bibliometric data from 1934 peer-reviewed articles retrieved from the SCOPUS database.The most significant contributions in net-zero research have originated primarily from UK, USA, and China. The results of the network analysis identified seven foundational themes of research - greenhouse gas emission, deep decarbonisation, earth material, residential building, high-rise building, displacement, ventilation, and walling element. The burst analysis revealed how a number of emerging digital technologies in the sector present opportunities to optimise future developments towards the attainment of a net-zero emission-built environment. To address the complexity associated with emissions caused by the built environment, the findings suggest that there is a need to expand the current LCA assessments to a broader, industry-wide scale, beyond the predominant ‘single building case study’ as the unit of reference. Moreover, the national net-zero pathway studies should aim to extend beyond the operational emission scenarios, and into assessing the impacts on materials and embedded emissions, which has grown exponentially.