The impacts of driving variables on energy-related carbon emissions reduction in the building sector based on an extended LMDI model: a case study in China.

As China's main contributor to energy-related carbon emissions, the building sector in Jiangsu Province generates around 13.58% of the national carbon emissions. However, the influential variables of the energy structure in Jiangsu Province have been little investigated during the past decade. With the increasing emphasis on China's investment in technological innovation and adjustment of its industrial structure, research and development (R&D) has become an inevitable area for carbon emissions reduction. Nevertheless, its role in carbon emissions has rarely been examined. In this research, based on the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) model, the variables affecting the fluctuation of carbon dioxide emissions in the building sector (CEBS) in Jiangsu Province during 2011-2019 were restructured by introducing technological factors related to the construction industry, including energy structure, energy intensity, R&D efficiency, R&D intensity, investment intensity, economic output, and population engaged in the construction industry. From the results, it can be inferred that (1) energy structure, energy intensity, R&D efficiency, and investment intensity operate as inhibitors in increasing CEBS, and investment intensity exerts a more prominent impact on suppressing the growth of CEBS; (2) R&D intensity, economic output, and population engaged have a promotional effect on the fluctuations of CEBS, among which the first factor most actively promoted the increase in carbon emissions, although its role was negligible for economic output and the population; and (3) R&D efficiency, R&D intensity, and investment intensity are the three most critical variables for influencing the CEBS, but they are volatile. The numerical fluctuation caused by the three factors might be correlated to national and local policy interventions. Finally, policy recommendations are put forward for strengthening the management and minimizing the CEBS in Jiangsu Province.

Spatial correlation network structure of China's building carbon emissions and its driving factors: A social network analysis method.

Clarifying the spatial association network of provincial building carbon emissions and its influential drivers is profoundly significant for transregional collaborative emission reduction and regionally-coordinated development. This study adopts the social network analysis method to investigate the network structure characteristics of carbon emissions in the building sector based on China's provincial-level evidence from 2000 to 2018. Then, the quadratic assignment procedure is further utilized to examine the driving factors. The results demonstrate that building carbon emissions in China take the form of a network structure. From 2000 to 2018, the relevance and stability of the spatial associations gradually strengthened. Shanghai, Jiangsu, Tianjin, Beijing and Zhejiang are in the center of the spatial association network and play a vital part in the network. The network of carbon emissions in the building sector can be classified into four plates: the main inflow plate, main outflow plate, bidirectional spillover plate and agent plate. Geographical adjacency, economic development level, energy intensity and industrial structure are significantly correlated with building carbon emissions. The urbanization level has no significant influence on the spatial correlations of building carbon emissions. This study is conducive to formulating energy conservation policies and promoting transregional collaborative emission reductions.

Dynamic Nexus between Technological Innovation and Building Sector Carbon Emissions in the BRICS Countries.

The greatest contribution to global CO2 emissions comes from the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The building sector in these countries is one of the sectors that increases CO2 emissions significantly. Increasing CO2 emissions in the building sector adversely affects sustainable development. Therefore, measures to mitigate environmental damage become substantially important. Improvements in technological innovation can be among the measures considered to mitigate CO2 emissions. In this study, the effects of technological innovation on the carbon emissions caused by the building sector are examined by panel data methods for the BRICS countries in the period 1992-2018. It has been observed that there is a long-term relationship between the series. As the results of Dynamic Common Correlated Effects indicated, increased technological innovation reduces carbon emissions. This result is meaningful to encourage investments related to technological innovation.

Influence of Polypropylene, Glass and Steel Fiber on the Thermal Properties of Concrete.

The variety of approaches to tackle climate change reflects the size of this global problem. No technology will act as a panacea to cure the greenhouse gas emissions problem, but new building materials with byproducts or even wastes have the potential to play a major role in reducing the environmental impacts of the building sector. In this study, three potential solutions of concrete with dispersed reinforcement in the form of recycled fibers (polypropylene, glass and steel) were examined. The aim is to present a detailed analysis of the thermal properties of new building materials in an experimental approach. Concrete mixtures were prepared according to a new, laboratory-calculated recipe containing granite aggregate, a polycarboxylate-based deflocculant, Portland cement (52.5 MPa) and fibers. This experimental work involved three different contents of each fiber (0.5%, 0.75% and 1.0 wt.%), and all tests were carried after the complete curing cycle of concrete (28 days).

What Is the Amount of China's Building Floor Space from 1996 to 2014?

The amount of building floor space (BFS) plays a key role in the energy and material demand prediction. Unfortunately, BFS estimation has faced the challenge of ineffective and inadequate approaches, and thus reliable data concerning China's BFS is unavailable. This study proposes a new estimation method for China's BFS and then estimates historical BFS by type in China from 1996 to 2014. The results show that total Chinese BFS grew from 28.1 billion m2 in 1996 to 61.3 billion m2 in 2014, increasing more than twice, with an annual growth rate of 4.4% from 1996 to 2014. During 1996-2014, urban residential BFS witnessed the highest annual increase rate (9.3%), while the growth rate for commercial and rural residential BFS was lower: 4.4% and 1.6%, respectively. By comparing with available statistics data, this study finds the model deviations are well below 5%, which indicates the reliability of the proposed method and robustness of the results. The proposed method not only can address the deficiencies of statistic yearbook and overcome the shortages of previous estimation approaches but also can derive more accurate and reliable data. This study lays a sound basis for the following study on building stock and building energy efficiency work.

Components reuse in the building sector - A systematic review.

Widespread reuse of building components can promote the circularity of materials in the building sector. However, the reuse of building components is not yet a mainstream practise. Although there have been several studies on the factors affecting the reuse of building components, there is no single study that has tried to harmonize the circumstances affecting this intervention. Through a systematic literature review targeting peer-reviewed journal articles, this study intends to identify and stratify factors affecting the reuse of components of the superstructure of a building and eventually delineate correlations between these factors. Factors identified throughout this study are classified into six major categories and 23 sub-categories. Then the inter-dependencies between the barriers are studied by developing the correlation indices between the sub-categories. Results indicate that addressing the economic, social and regulatory barriers should be prioritized. Although the impact of barriers under perception, risk, compliance and market sub-categories are very pronounced, the highest inter-dependency among the sub-categories is found between perception and risk. It suggests that the perception of the stakeholders about building components reuse is affected by the potential risks associated with this intervention.

Projection datasets of city- and grid-level building energy consumption for Hubei Province, China.

This data article takes a typical low-carbon pilot province in Middle China (Hubei) as an example to present the pathway of building energy conservation and emission reductions for different cities. The data contains middle-to-long-term predictions of provincial socioeconomic factors (Gross Regional Production, population and urbanization rate), based on which building sector energy consumption under the base scenario could be estimated on provincial scale. Besides, energy demand and structures of the building sectors in cities from various categories are also provided by considering the spatial heterogeneity of city-level economic development and energy use intensities. This dataset could be used to calculate building sector emission reduction potentials on city scale so as to fill in the research gap of mitigation pathway modeling for multiple cities. Moreover, it also proposes a reasonable and convenient approach to allocate provincial targets concerning emission intensity and total amount control. Finally, the data offers high-resolution gridded projections for building energy consumption, which could be expanded to other sectors and cities to assist in more refined urban governance and atmospheric and climate modeling. The data presented herein are associated with the research article "Carbon mitigation of China's building sector on city-level: pathway and policy implications by a low-carbon province case study" [1].

Carbon dioxide intensity and income level in the Chinese megacities' residential building sector: Decomposition and decoupling analyses.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by residential building sector is essential for China to achieve its 2030 carbon emission peak. As the indicator to control the total CO2 emissions, CO2 intensity feature should be preferentially analyzed. Through the decomposition and decoupling approaches, this paper is the first to investigate whether CO2 intensity decouples from the income level in residential building sector of China and its four megacities [Beijing (BJ), Tianjin (TJ), Shanghai (SH), and Chongqing (CQ)] from 2000 to 2016. Major findings indicate that: (1) The nationwide status was the weak decoupling during 2001-2016 excluding 2003 (the expansive coupling) and 2014 (the strong decoupling). (2) At the megacity scale, only four decoupling levels appeared and the decoupling effect rank of four megacities is as follows: CQ > TJ > BJ > SH (2001-2004), BJ > TJ > CQ > SH (2005-2008), SH > BJ > TJ > CQ (2009-2012), and SH > BJ > TJ > CQ (2013-2016). (3) Carbon Kuznets curves explained the different decoupling modes of four megacities and the increasing decoupling effects in 2001-2016 are attributable to the implementation of energy conservation strategy. Overall, this paper fills the gap of decoupling CO2 intensity from the income level in residential building sector. Furthermore, a significant contribution is made by this paper to the carbon emission peak analysis in residential building sector of China, and our efforts will also be a case for other countries and cities to evaluate the decoupling effect in their residential building sectors.

Do commercial building sector-derived carbon emissions decouple from the economic growth in Tertiary Industry? A case study of four municipalities in China.

Decoupling economic development from carbon emissions generated from China's commercial buildings (CECCB) is regarded as an important indicator for evaluating the energy efficiency of the commercial building sector in China. Our study is the first to propose a decoupling method based on a Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition analysis with the Kaya identity to analyze the relationship between economic development in China's Tertiary Industry and the CECCB growth at both national and municipal levels. The following three main results are found. (1) At the national level, commercial building sector decoupling from 2001 to 2015 is limited. Only four decoupling stages are observed at the municipal level with the ordering of municipal decoupling measured as follows: Tianjin > Beijing > Shanghai > Chongqing (2001-2010), Chongqing > Beijing > Tianjin > Shanghai (2011-2015). (2) Two extended versions of Environmental Kuznets Curves further show what drives different decoupling levels in the four municipalities. (3) More significant decoupling effects observed in recent years can be attributed to significant improvements made in the energy efficiency work of China's commercial building sector. Overall, our approach successfully covers a research gap relevant to the decoupling of the relationship between CECCB growth and the economic development of China's Tertiary Industry. Furthermore, we believe our results can be used to guide the evaluation of energy efficiency work in China's commercial building sector, and such efforts can also enrich diverse research conducted on China's low carbon economic systems.

Evaluation of environmental health benefits of China's building energy conservation policies: an integrated assessment on national and provincial levels.

This article evaluates the effect of energy conservation policies and carbon mitigation efforts on reducing health damage in China's building sector, which has been long ignored. The study bases on both national and provincial levels. To evaluate the health damage effect, we use domestic data by region to ensure the reliability of the evaluation. Results show that in the co-control scenario, the GDP loss saved from health benefit in 2020, 2030, and 2050 is 0.13 %, 0.16 %, and 0.23 %, respectively, compared to reference scenario. At a provincial level, extra health benefit of 16, 16, 33, 25, and 23 RMB/person can be observed for Beijing, Heilongjiang, Guangdong, Henan, and Qinghai owing to energy conservation, even with the strictest end-of-pipe control measures. The results confirm the significant effect of energy conservation efforts on reducing the health damage in China's building sector at both national and provincial levels.

What drives the carbon mitigation in Chinese commercial building sector? Evidence from decomposing an extended Kaya identity.

Energy efficiency in the building sector is expected to contribute >50% to the nationwide carbon mitigation efforts for achieving China's carbon emission peak in 2030, and carbon mitigation in Chinese commercial buildings (CMCCB) is an indicator of this effort. However, the CMCCB assessment has faced the challenge of ineffective and inadequate approaches; therefore, we have followed a different approach. Using the China Database of Building Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions as our data source, our study is the first to employ the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) to decompose five driving forces from the Kaya identity of Chinese commercial building carbon emissions (CCBCE) to assess the CMCCB values in 2001-2015. The results of our study indicated that: (1) Only two driving forces (i.e., the reciprocal of GDP per capita of Tertiary Industry in China and the CCBCE intensity) contributed negatively remi to CCBCE during 2001-2015, and the quantified negative contributions denoted the CMCCB values. Specifically, the CMCCB values in 2001-2005, 2006-2010, and 2011-2015 were 123.96, 252.83, and 249.07 MtCO2, respectively. (2) The data quality control involving the CMCCB values proved the reliability of our CMCCB assessment model, and the universal applicability of this model was also confirmed. (3) The substantial achievements of the energy efficiency project in the Chinese commercial building sector were the root cause of the rapidly growing CMCCB. Overall, we believe that our model successfully bridges the research gap of the nationwide CMCCB assessment and that the proposed model is also suitable either at the provincial level or in different building climate zones in China. Meanwhile, a global-level assessment of the carbon mitigation in the commercial building sector is feasible through applying our model. Furthermore, we consider our contribution as constituting significant guidance for developing the building energy efficiency strategy in China in the upcoming phase.

Inventário do significado do trabalho: explorando evidências de validade no setor de edificações / Work meaning inventory: exploring its evidences of validity in the building sector / Inventario del significado del trabajo: explorando sus evidencias de validez en el sector de la construcción

Este artigo teve como objetivo explorar características de validade do Inventário do Significado do Trabalho (IST), bem como explorar a relação dos tipos de significados e as variáveis sócio-ocupacionais. Para tanto, aplicamos o IST a 402 trabalhadores do setor de edificações em duas capitais do Nordeste brasileiro. Analisamos as respostas dos participantes com a técnica Smallest Space Analisys (SSA). Obtivemos cinco tipos de atributos valorativos e sete de atributos descritivos do trabalho, que se revelaram associados à idade, ao tempo de trabalho em edificações e ao tempo de trabalho no emprego atual. (AU)

This article aims to explore characteristics of validity to the Work Meaning Inventory (WMI), and to investigate the relationship of the types of meanings and socio-occupational variables. We applied the WMI to 402 workers in the building sector in two capitals for Brazilian Northeast. We used Smallest Space Analysis (SSA) to analyze the participants' answers. We found five types of values attributes and seven types of descriptive attributes of the work, which proved to be associated to the age, the working time in construction and the employment time in current job. (AU)

Este artículo tiene como objetivo explorar las características de validez Inventario del Significado del Trabajo (IST) y explorar la relación de los tipos de significados y las variables socio-ocupacionales. Por lo tanto, se aplica el IST de sector de la construcción 402 trabajadores en dos capitales del Nordeste brasileño. Analizamos las tareas pendientes con la técnica más pequeño espacio Análisis (SSA). Se obtuvieron cinco tipos de atributo-tos apreciados y siete atributos descriptivos de la obra, que resultó estar asociada con la edad, el tiempo de trabajo en los edificios y el tiempo en la corriente empleo y el trabajo. (AU)