4.8 Article

Historical decarbonization of global commercial building operations in the 21st century

Journal

APPLIED ENERGY
Volume 322, Issue -, Pages -

Publisher

ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2022.119401

Keywords

Global commercial buildings; Operational carbon emissions; End -use activities; Decomposing structural decomposition; Decarbonization strategy

Funding

  1. National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of China [21CJY030]
  2. Beijing Natural Science Founda-tion [8224085]
  3. China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [2020M680020]
  4. Shuimu Tsinghua Scholar Program of Tsing-hua University [2019SM139]

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This study evaluates the decarbonization progress of commercial building operations in 16 countries over the last two decades and reveals that emission factors and industrial structures are key to reducing carbon emissions. The energy intensity effects have started to promote global decarbonization in commercial building operations, and the implementation of specific strategies and measures has had a positive impact on decarbonization.
Building operations will be the most critical step in completing the last mile of global carbon neutrality. To seek the best practical path to decarbonize commercial building operations, this study assesses the decarbonization progress of commercial building operations in 16 countries over the last two decades considering socioeconomic, technical, climatic and end-use factors through the decomposing structural decomposition method. The results reveal that (1) the average carbon intensity of commercial building operations in 16 countries has maintained an annual decline of 1.94% throughout the period 2000-2019, and emission factors and industrial structures were generally the key to decarbonizing commercial building operations; (2) energy intensity effects have started to promote global decarbonization in commercial building operations since 2010, with contributions from space heating [-14.33 kg of carbon dioxide per square meter per year (kgCO(2)/m(2)/yr)], service lighting (-5.29 kgCO(2)/m(2)/yr), appliances , others (-2.85 kgCO(2)/m(2)/yr) , space cooling (-1.24 kgCO(2)/m(2)/ yr); and specialIntscript the total decarbonization of commercial building operations worldwide was 230.28 mega-tons of carbon dioxide per yr, with a decarbonization efficiency of 10.05% in 2001-2019. Moreover, the robustness of this decarbonization assessment is tested using the typical index decomposition analysis and the decarbonization strategies of global commercial building operations are reviewed. Overall, this study assesses the global historical progress in decarbonizing commercial building operations and closes the relevant gap, and it helps plan the stepwise carbon neutral pathway of future global buildings by the mid-century.

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