The Impact of Technical Progress and Fuel Switching on Building Sector's Decarbonization in China

Abstract

During the recent decades, China's building energy consumption has been growing rapidly. And the energy structure also changes quickly with more natural gas & electricity and less coal. Meanwhile, the technology used in building sector is improving towards higher energy efficiency. In this paper, the impact of technical progress and fuel switching in building sector are analyzed. China TIMES model is used to model the future energy consumption in building sector. The modelled results indicate that energy consumption grows up to around 39EJ in 2050 while the energy intensity still stays in a reasonable level in building sector. And with a stricter policy on fuel switching, building sector can reach a relatively low-carbon future with more clean and low-carbon fuel used in this sector, but it's still very hard to access the emission peak before 2050.