Low-Carbon Development of the Construction Industry in China's Pilot Provinces

The construction industry in China has developed rapidly. However, the development has been accompanied by a large amount of energy consumption and carbon emissions. Thus, the formulation of policies is complex, and research on the impact of emission reduction policies on carbon reduction in the construction industry, especially in China, has become necessary as it has massive regions with uneven development. Combined with the coefficient in the 2012 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines for national greenhouse gas inventories and China's calorific value, this study took the first batch of low-carbon pilot provinces (Guangdong, Hubei, Liaoning, Shaanxi, and Yunnan) announced by China's State Commission for Reform and Development in 2010 as the research object and separated the construction carbon emissions into direct and indirect categories to improve the accuracy of calculations at the provincial level. The EKC (environmental Kuznets curve) and Tapio model were employed to study the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions of the construction industry, then the decoupling of major influencing factors of carbon emissions in the low-carbon pilot province in China from 2005 to 2014 based on the features of different regions and the economic policy planning in China were comparatively analyzed. The results showed that the construction industry carbon emissions and economic growth had a non-significant decoupling state in underdeveloped regions such as Shaanxi, Liaoning, and Yunnan, which would be better with low carbon development in potential, whereas they were significant decoupling states in well-developed regions such as Guangdong and Hubei. Then, this study revealed that the evolving trends of the decoupling of major influencing factors varied in different provinces; therefore, the results and insights support the policy and decisions to minimize construction carbon emissions.