Energy Policy 134 (2019) 110949

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Energy Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol

Modelling of energy consumption and carbon emission from the building T

construction sector in China, a process-based LCA approach
Yang Zhang, Da Yan∗, Shan Hu∗∗, Siyue Guo

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: A rapid rise in China's construction scale due to urbanization has resulted in a large amount of energy con-
Embodied energy sumption and carbon emission. In order to achieve carbon emission reduction and energy security, it is im-
Carbon emissions portant to assess the energy use of and emissions from the building construction sector. This paper presents a
Building construction China Building Construction Model (CBCM) based on a process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) approach and
Process-based LCA model
discusses the trends in energy consumption of and carbon emission regarding China's building construction
sector from 2000 to 2016. In 2016, the total energy consumption of the building construction sector was 411
million tce, accounting for approximately 9% of the country's total energy consumption. The construction ac-
tivities of urban residential, public, and commercial buildings have replaced rural residential buildings as the
main source of energy consumption and emission. Construction scale, building structure type, and material
production efficiency are the three important driving factors. A decline in China's building construction scale,
promotion of new low carbon building structures, and improvement in production efficiency may reduce future
energy use and carbon emissions related to the building construction sector.

1. Introduction
Urbanization in China has advanced rapidly during the past dec-
ades. From 2000 to 2016, China's urbanization rate increased from 36%
to 58% (NBS, 2017b) and the number of urban households increased
from 147 million to 283 million (BERC, 2018). Since urbanization has
promoted the construction of buildings (Hu et al., 2017), the completed
building floor area in China reached 4.22 billion m2 in 2016 (NBS,
2017b; NBS, 2017c), which is more than five times as compared to
2000.
With this trend, the energy use and carbon emissions in building
sector has attracted increasingly attention (Huo et al., 2018). Except for
operation stage, new building construction consumed a large amount of
materials, which is one of the main causes of high energy consumption
and carbon emissions in China. According to a preliminary estimate by
the Building Energy Research Center of Tsinghua University, the energy
consumption of China's building and infrastructure sector was 1.07
billion tce in 2015, accounting for 25% of China's total energy con-
sumption. Correspondingly, carbon emissions reached 3.57 billion
tCO2, exceeding 1/3rd of the total carbon emissions (BERC, 2018).
Meanwhile, China is facing dual pressures from climate change and
high energy consumption (Hu et al., 2016). Under the Paris Agreement,
it was proposed to limit the global temperature rise to no more than 2°
(UNFCCC, 2015). Based on this target, China has proposed a peak in
carbon emissions by 2030 (Wei, 2015). China's primary energy con-
sumption reached 4.36 billion tce in 2016 (NBS, 2017a), accounting for
23% of the global energy consumption, while its external dependence
on oil and natural gas exceeded 60% and 30%, respectively (Wang,
2017). The Chinese government and its associated administrative en-
tities aim to promote savings in building energy consumption through
relevant legislations (Yan et al., 2017). Hence, it is important to assess
the current status of energy consumption and carbon emissions of
China's building construction sector at the building construction stage
to find a reasonable approach to achieve low carbon development.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is widely used in the study of energy
consumption and carbon emissions of the building construction sector.
There are two main approaches toward LCA, that is process-based LCA
(bottom-up) and input-output analysis-based LCA (top-down)
(Säynäjoki et al., 2017; Monahan and Powell, 2011). Process-based
LCA, which takes a detailed look into construction information, such as
material use and production efficiency, can analyze the influence of
specific technologies on the energy consumed during construction.
However, a majority of current studies have focused only on a single
building or a specific technology, and very few studies illustrate the

∗
Corresponding author.Building Energy Research Center, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China.
∗∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: yangzhang13@tsinghua.org.cn (Y. Zhang), yanda@tsinghua.edu.cn (D. Yan), hu-s06@mails.tsinghua.edu.cn (S. Hu),
guosiyue@tsinghua.edu.cn (S. Guo).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2019.110949
Received 13 December 2018; Received in revised form 14 August 2019; Accepted 20 August 2019
Available online 30 August 2019
0301-4215/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Y. Zhang, et al.
historical trends and current situation of energy consumption and
emissions on a nationwide scale (Buyle et al., 2013). Additionally, an
LCA based on a top-down approach mainly uses macroeconomic data
for input-output analysis. Since this approach does not illustrate the
relationship of specific technical variables (such as building type,
structure type, and energy type) with energy use and carbon emissions
in a more detailed manner, it cannot provide concrete technical sug-
gestions (Chang et al., 2013; Peñaloza et al., 2018).
Li et al. (2014) developed an assessment framework to analyze the
embodied carbon impact on residential buildings. Three types of re-
sidential buildings in China were assessed for their case study. In an-
other study, material-based energy use and carbon emissions over the
life cycle of a bamboo-structure residential building prototype were
analyzed, and the embodied energy of a typical brick-concrete building
was compared to that of a bamboo-structure building (Yu et al., 2011).
Zhang and Wang (2016a) calculated the carbon footprint of a building
construction based on a case study of three buildings with different
heights and applications and found that materials manufacturing ac-
counted for 80–90% of the total building emissions. Han et al. (2013)
used construction engineering of a cluster of landmark commercial
buildings in E-town, Beijing as a case study and presented a detailed
embodied energy consumption evaluation framework for building
construction engineering. Su and Zhang (2016) created a model for
embodied energy consumption and carbon emissions of residential
buildings and looked at three steel-construction residential buildings in
China. Another study of carbon emissions over a building's life cycle
based on Ecotect and building information modeling in developing
areas of Nanjing was conducted by Peng (2016) using the Run Shaw
Architectural building as case study. Some studies were also based on
the input-output method. Chang et al. (2010) developed a 24-sector
environmental input-output life-cycle assessment model based on the
2002 Chinese national economic and environmental data. In that study,
estimates were based on the level of economic activity related to
planned future civil works in 2015. Chang et al. (2013) established a
process-based hybrid life-cycle assessment model to quantify the life-
cycle energy use for both urban and rural residential buildings in China
and developed an input-output model, for the pre-use phase, based on
the 2007 Chinese economic data. A more recent study proposed a hy-
brid input-output approach by combining domestic statistical data and
Input-Output tables (for 1997, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007, 2010, and
2012) and demonstrated the energy consumption at the building con-
struction stage for these seven years (Zhang and Wang, 2016b). Hong
et al. (2016) employed a multi-regional input-output model to the in-
vestigate energy use embodied in the consumption and interregional
trade of China's construction industry.
In summary, there is a lack of studies conducted at a nationwide
scale, and the input-output analysis based LCA does not provide the
desired level of details, such as the completed building floor area and
distribution of the building structure (Zhang and Wang, 2016a). Based
on this top-down approach, it is difficult to assess the relationship of
specific technical measures with energy use and carbon emissions to
make policy-level suggestions.
The objective of this research was to study the historical and current
situation of energy consumption and carbon emissions of China's
building construction sector. Process-based LCA methodology has the
advantage of analyzing specific technical impacts. In order to do so, this
study developed the China Building Construction Model (CBCM) based
on process-based LCA and analyzed the historical and current situations
from 2000 to 2016. Additionally, the study also discussed related sug-
gestions.
2. Methodology
2.1. Definition and scope
This paper presents an improved method to estimate energy
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Energy Policy 134 (2019) 110949
consumption of and emissions from China's building construction sector
and establishes the CBCM based on process-based LCA. In this section,
some important definitions and scope of this model are explained as
follows:
Energy consumption of building construction sector: Because
China is in the process of rapid urbanization, building construction
requires large amount of materials and has a great influence on the
manufacturing sector, and the society at large. Therefore, energy con-
sumption related to material production should be accounted for while
calculating the energy consumption of the building construction sector
to comprehensively measure the impact of new building construction
on the energy consumption of the whole society. In this study, energy
consumption of the following four stages of building construction are
taken into account:
A1, raw material extraction and transportation: this stage refers to
the raw material extraction, until it enters the factory. The energy
consumption of the equipment used to extract the raw material and
transport them to the factory was taken into account in this study.
A2, building material manufacturing: this stage lasts from the time
the raw material enters the factory until the finished building materials
exits the factory. The energy consumption of the direct and indirect
production systems (auxiliary, affiliated production system) were con-
sidered.
B, building material transportation: this stage begins from the time
that the building material exits the factory until it arrives at the con-
struction site. The energy consumed by the vehicles used to transport
the building materials was taken into consideration.
C, on-site construction: the energy consumption of the equipment
used on-site for the building construction was taken into account.
Stages A1 and A2 cover the whole process of building material
production, from raw material extraction to the final product, and the
energy consumption for material production during these two stages
can also be defined as the embodied energy of building materials
(Lawson and Rudder, 1996).
Carbon emissions from the building construction sector: In this
study, the carbon emissions during stages A1, A2, B, and C were taken
into account, like it was done for energy consumption. In addition to
the carbon emissions related to energy consumption, emissions caused
by chemical reactions, other than combustion, in the production pro-
cesses were also accounted for in this study. According to the classifi-
cation method of IPCC, this is called energy related emissions and in-
dustry process related emissions (IPCC, 2006). During the above stages,
industry process related emissions were mainly produced during ce-
ment production. Based on the related research, during the production
of cement, approximately 50% of carbon emissions are produced in the
non-combustion process (Lin et al., 2015).
2.2. Classification framework
The energy consumption of the construction industry can be divided
into energy consumption of infrastructure construction and that of
building construction. This study focused solely on the building con-
struction sector.
Previous researches have indicated that the building construction
sector's energy consumption and emissions are affected by building
type, structure type, material type, and energy type (Peñaloza et al.,
2018). Therefore, the classification in the model should correspond to
the actual situation in China. The classification structure of CBCM is
shown in Fig. 1.
While material use intensity and embodied energy are largely in-
fluenced by building structure types, the structure distribution varies
among different building types. In China, there is a big difference be-
tween urban and rural areas and three types of civil buildings are
usually taken into consideration: urban residential buildings, rural re-
sidential buildings, and public and commercial buildings (P&C build-
ings) (BERC, 2016; NBS, 2017b; NBS, 2017c).
Y. Zhang, et al. Energy Policy 134 (2019) 110949

Fig. 1. Model framework.

Fig. 2. Material use intensity for different building structures.

Five types of building structures were considered for this model: the industry process related emissions were emitted in the cement
brick wood structure, brick-concrete structure, frame-shear structure, production process (NDRC, 2004).
shear-wall structure, and steel structure. Brick wood and brick concrete
structures were mainly used in rural residential buildings, accounting
2.3. Data collection and calculation flow
for over 85% of the rural residential construction volume (Gu, 2009).
On the other hand, brick concrete, frame-shear, shear-wall, and steel
2.3.1. . Calculation of material consumption
structure were used in urban residential and P&C buildings and ac-
Material consumption intensity differs a lot with respect to the
counted for over 90% of the construction volume (Yi and Xiaosai, 2015;
building type and structure type. Therefore, material consumption can
Gu, 2009). Therefore, these five types of structures are representative of
be calculated by the following equation:
the total construction volume in China. There is a big difference in
material use intensity among these structures, as shown in Fig. 2 (Gu, 3
Mtx = ∑i = 1 Mtxi
2009; He, 2012; Yi and Xiaosai, 2015). 5
Among the urban residential buildings, brick concrete structures, Mtxi = Sti × ∑s = 1 (Dtis × Itxis )
which have a relatively low material use intensity, were widely used
where M is building material consumption, S is the completed building
before the 21st century. Frame-shear and shear-wall structures, with a
floor area, D is the distribution and I is the material use intensity. t
relatively high material use, gradually replaced the brick concrete
represents different year from 2000–2016, x represents the different
structures in recent years. Steel structure is a new type of structure used
types of building materials, including steel, cement, brick, building
in urban residential buildings in China, which is suitable for high-rise
ceramics, aluminum, and glass. i represents the various types of
apartments (MOHURD, 2013). Compared with frame-shear and shear-
buildings where 1–3 stands for urban residential building, P&C
wall structures, steel structure uses a significantly lesser amount of
building, and rural residential building, separately. s denotes the dif-
cement. Brick wood structure was mainly used in rural residential
ferent structure type where 1–5 means brick wood structure, brick
buildings, wherein the load-bearing bodies, such as beams and columns
concrete structure, frame-shear structure, shear wall structure and steel
are mainly made of wood, and the bricks are mainly used to build walls
structure, separately.
and internal partitions. Therefore, this type of structure does not con-
For the completed building floor area each year (S), Nation Bureau
sume steel and only consumes a small amount of traditional building
of Statistics did the official survey and released two sets of data an-
materials, such as cement.
nually. One set is the statistics based on the fixed asset investments
For material types, except for steel and cement, brick, building
(fixed asset investments over 5 million yuan were taken into account)
ceramics, aluminum, and flat glass were also taken into consideration
(NBS, 2017b), the other set is based on the construction enterprises
as these are the most commonly used building materials in China's
(number of qualified construction enterprises) (NBS, 2017c). With the
building construction sector (Yi and Xiaosai, 2015). In this model,
development of society, construction activities were gradually stan-
different energy sources, such as coal, oil, gas, and electricity were
dardized and undertaken by qualified construction enterprises. From
considered to estimate the energy related carbon emissions. Cement
2011, the total floor area under the construction company caliber
was considered for industry process related carbon emissions as most of
started to exceed that of the fixed assets investment caliber, as shown in

3
Y. Zhang, et al.
Figure 3. Competed building floor area annually under different caliber from National Bureau of Statistics.
Fig. 3. Considering that the statistics of the total floor area in recent
years are more comprehensive under construction company caliber,
data under construction company caliber were used for this study.
Despite a lack of official data in China for structure distribution (D)
and material use intensity (I), a few studies have been conducted in this
study area. For material use intensity, China Architecture Design and
Research Group did a nationwide survey in different seismic intensity
zones with 226 urban building samples. Based on a few typical rural
residential samples, Gu (2009) estimated the material use intensity of
rural residential buildings. For building structure distribution, China
Architecture Design and Research Group and China National En-
gineering Research Center carried out a nationwide survey on urban
building structure information during 2003–2005 and obtained 743
samples (Lou, 2011). Rural residential structures were obtained from a
nationwide survey data released by National Bureau of Statistics. Gu
(2009) and He (2012) further collated the above data, and from their
research, D and I were obtained for this study.
2.3.2. . calculation of energy consumption
Based on the scope definition, the total energy consumption of a
new building construction for each year can be divided into four parts.
Therefore, the total energy consumption can be calculated as follows:
Et = EA1t + EA2t + EBt + ECt
where EA1t is the energy consumed during the raw material extraction
and transportation stage each year, EA2t is the energy consumed during
the building material manufacturing stage each year, EBt is the energy
consumed during building material transportation stage each year, and
ECt is the energy consumed during the on-site construction stage each
year.
The calculation flow and data input of each part are as follows:
Raw material extraction and transportation: the energy con-
sumed during this stage can be calculated by the following equation:
6 this stage on a case level or regional level (Yan, 2011; Gu et al., 2007; Yi
EA1t = ∑ IA1tx × Mtx
x=1
where t represents different year, x represents the different types of
building materials, 1–6 stands for steel, cement, brick, building cera-
mics, aluminum, and glass separately, which is same in the following
context. I A1tx is the energy use intensity of different building material
during this stage each year. At present, most of the official data (sta-
tistical yearbook and standard for energy consumption quota) of pro-
duction energy consumption of building material is focused on the A2
stage, that is, from the time raw material enters the factory until the
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Energy Policy 134 (2019) 110949
finished building materials exit the factory. Few data focus on the raw
material extraction and transportation stage. China Building Materials
Academy researched common building materials such as steel, cement,
glasses, and ceramics, and found the energy use intensity of common
building material during this stage. Its findings indicated that the en-
ergy consumption of raw material extraction and transportation ac-
counts for a considerable proportion of building material production,
which should be fully considered. Other researchers have also studied
the embodied energy of different building materials (Gu et al., 2007;
Gong and Zhang, 2004; Wang and Gong, 2016; Yan, 2011). Further-
more, IA1 was estimated in this study based on the literature review.
Building material manufacturing: the energy consumption of this
stage can be calculated by the following equation:
6
EA2t = ∑ IA2tx × Mtx
x=1
where IA2tx is energy use intensity of different building material during
this stage each year. National Bureau of Statistics collects data from
various industry associations and releases the industry average com-
prehensive energy consumption of production of different building
materials annually, from the time the raw material enter the factory
until the finished building material exits the factory (NBS, 2017a). In
addition, relevant authoritative experts have also carried out research
in this field (Wang, 2017). In this study, the energy use intensity of
building material production was obtained from the above data source.
Building material transportation: the energy consumed during
this stage can be calculated by the following equation:
6
EA2t = ∑ IA2tx × Mtx
x=1
where IBtx is the transportation energy consumption per unit of building
material. Many researchers have estimated the energy consumption of
and Xiaosai, 2015; Yang, 2009). Among these, Yan (2011) demon-
strated the transportation energy use intensity by material type and this
was used to obtain the value of IB in this study.
On-site construction stage: For the energy consumption during
this stage, there is less related research at a nationwide level. Due to
this part of energy consumption accounts for a small proportion in pre-
occupancy stage, some researchers did the estimate based on the energy
balance (Yi and Xiaosai, 2015; Gu, 2009; Dai et al., 2017). The on-site
construction activity was mainly conducted by construction enterprises,
the energy balance (NBS, 2017a) release the energy consumption of
Y. Zhang, et al.
construction industry annually, this represents the energy consumed by
construction enterprises include building operation, transportation and
on-site construction, in this study, except 98% gasoline, 30% diesel and
all of the coal and heat, the remaining energy is used for on-site con-
struction, which is based on the research of Energy Research Institute
(ERI) (Dai et al., 2017).
2.3.3. Calculation of carbon emissions
Carbon emissions can be calculated based on the energy consump-
tion using the emission factors and energy structure. For energy emis-
sion factors, data was obtained from the Energy Data (Wang, 2017) and
the Annual Review of Low-carbon Development in China (Zhang and
Qi, 2017). The emission factors of coal, gas, and oil were treated as
constant variables in the model. The emission factor of electricity has
been significantly reduced in recent years due to the improvement of
power generation efficiency. For industry process emission factors, ce-
ment was the only factor considered and its emission factor was ob-
tained from the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas
Inventories (IPCC, 2006). For energy structure splitting, oil was con-
sidered for the raw material extraction and transportation stage, and
building material transportation stage. For building material manu-
facturing stage, Zhou et al. (2003) gave the energy use structure of
different building materials, for on-site construction, from which en-
ergy balance can be obtained (NBS, 2017a).
3. Result
3.1. Total energy consumption and carbon emissions
Fig. 4 shows the energy consumption and carbon emissions caused
by China's building construction sector annually. The total energy
consumption in 2016 was 410 million tce, accounting for 9% of energy
use of whole society in China, which included 170 million tce by urban
residential buildings, 58 million tce by rural residential buildings, and
181 million tce by P&C buildings, accounting for 42%, 14%, and 44%.
From the perspective of historical development, the energy used by
China's building construction sector increased four times from 2000 to
2016, rising quickly at first, and then stabilizing in recent years. This
trend is quite similar to the development trend of China's completed
building floor area, which implies that the construction scale is one of
the most important factors affecting the construction energy use. From
2008 to 2013, “The Plan of 4 Trillion Government Investment” en-
visaged rapid development of the building and infrastructure con-
struction sector, which directly led to an increase in energy use by the
building construction sector. After 2013, the growth rate of construc-
tion scale slowed down due to economic adjustments and urbanization.
This also led to the slowdown in the energy consumption growth rate.
With respect to the four stages discussed in this study, building
Fig. 4. Energy consumption and carbon emissions of China's building construction sector annually from 2000 to 2016.
5
Energy Policy 134 (2019) 110949
material manufacturing consumed the most energy and accounted for
over 80% of energy use during the pre-occupancy stage. Moreover, at
this stage, cement and steel consumed the most energy. In 2016, ap-
proximately 837 million tons of cement and 192 million tons of steel
were consumed during civil building construction, and their total pro-
duction energy consumption accounted for 33% and 51% of all the
building materials, respectively, as shown in Fig. 5(a).
The corresponding carbon emission from the building construction
sector was 1.4 billion tons in 2016, accounting for approximately 15%
of China's total carbon emission. Of this, energy related emissions ac-
counted for 71%, whereas the remaining 29% emissions came from
industrial processes. The carbon emission caused by the production of
cement, which is one of the most carbon intensive materials, was 0.7
billion tons in total (0.4 billion tons for industrial process and 0.3 tons
for energy use), which accounted for 56% of the carbon emissions from
the building material manufacturing stage, as shown in Fig. 5(b).
3.2. Urban residential buildings
With rapid urbanization, the construction scale of urban residential
buildings has increased in the past 20 years. The annual completed
building floor area of urban residential buildings reached 1.3 billion m2
in 2016, which is over five times the value as compared to 2000.
Therefore, the energy consumed during the construction of urban re-
sidential buildings grew rapidly. In 2016, China's urbanization rate was
58%, which will keep increasing until 2035, based on the government's
future plan (Jinping, 2017). Hence, construction of urban residential
buildings is expected to continue and there is a need to focus on energy
conservation and emissions reduction targets with respect to the con-
struction sector.
The embodied energy intensity of urban residential buildings was
3737 MJ/m2 in 2016 and has remained stable since the 2000s.
Embodied energy intensity is influenced by the change in building
structure and improvement of production efficiency of building mate-
rials.
The building structure share of urban residential buildings has
changed in the past decade. In 2000, brick concrete structure was the
main structure type used in new buildings, which consumes relatively
less material. With the development of building technologies, brick
concrete structure was gradually replaced by frame-shear and shear-
wall structures, and the proportion of brick concrete structure de-
creased from over 60%–10%, as shown in Fig. 6. Therefore, urban re-
sidential buildings have become more material intensive as the new
structures consume more cement and steel. For example, in 2000, the
average steel use in urban residential buildings was 4.26 t/100 m2, but
in 2016 this number rose to 6.24 t/100 m2.
However, the production efficiency of building materials has im-
proved in these years, as shown in Fig. 7. The comprehensive energy
Y. Zhang, et al.
Fig. 5. Share of production energy consumption and emissions by material type (2016).
consumption of cement and steel production declined significantly,
reducing by 21% and 39%, respectively, which is of great significance
in reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions in the building
construction sector.
Although urban residential buildings consume more building ma-
terials, an improvement in production efficiency of building materials
has reduced the energy consumption and emissions of each unit of
building materials, and ultimately enabled the embodied energy in-
tensity of urban residential buildings to remain stable. Hence, the scale
of future urban residential construction, promotion of new structures,
and improvement in production efficiency are important factors af-
fecting the energy consumption with respect to urban residential con-
struction.
3.3. Public and commercial buildings
Similar to the urban residential buildings, the construction scale of P
&C buildings increased rapidly with the urbanization process and is
expected to maintain a certain construction scale in the future. In 2016,
the completed building floor area of P&C buildings was 1.2 billion m2
(as opposed to 1.3 billion m2 for urban residential buildings), but the
corresponding construction energy consumption was 181 million tce
(compared to 170 million tce for urban residential buildings). Due to
the large spatial span, P&C buildings use more frame-shear structures,
shear-wall structures, and steel structures, as they can afford greater
Fig. 6. Structure share and embodied energy intensity of urban residential buildings.
6
Energy Policy 134 (2019) 110949
load. Consequently, P&C buildings have a greater embodied energy
intensity, which is usually more than 4500 MJ/m2.
As shown in Fig. 8, the embodied energy intensity of P&C buildings
decreased significantly during past 10 years, from over 6500 MJ/m2 to
approximately 4500 MJ/m2. The structural distribution did not change
significantly, and the frame-shear structure was used as the main
structure type. Therefore, the consumption intensity of the building
materials in P&C buildings was stable, and the embodied energy in-
tensity continued to decline with an improvement in production effi-
ciency.
3.4. Rural residential buildings
Unlike urban residential and P&C buildings, the proportion of
construction energy use of rural residential building has decreased
continuously in the past ten years, due to the movement of people from
rural areas to cities. In 2000, rural residential buildings accounted for
27% of construction energy use from civil buildings, however, in 2016,
it was only 14%. During the same time, the embodied energy intensity
of rural residential buildings reduced from 2300 MJ/m2 to 1700 MJ/
m2.
As urbanization process continues, rural population will continue to
shift to urban areas (Peng et al., 2015), and there will be a lack of
demand for new residences in rural area. Hence, the energy consump-
tion from rural residential construction may remain at a lower level and
Y. Zhang, et al.
Fig. 7. Comprehensive energy consumption of cement and steel production.
Fig. 8. Structure share and embodied energy intensity of public and commercial buildings.
will have a limited impact.
4. Discussion
The objective of this research was to study the historical and current
situation of energy consumption and carbon emissions with respect to
China's building construction sector (excluding the infrastructure
sector) and provide suggestions. Since process-based LCA method has
the advantage of analyzing specific technical impacts, this study de-
veloped the CBCM based on the process-based LCA approach and
analyzed the historical and current situations from 2000 to 2016.
Furthermore, energy conservation and emission reduction possibilities
as well as limitations of this research were discussed.
4.1. Building construction scale
Construction scale is one of the most important driving factors of
energy consumption of and emission from the building construction
sector. From 2000 to 2016, the trend of energy consumption was si-
milar to the completed building floor area. In the process of urbaniza-
tion, the construction scale of urban residential and P&C buildings has
continued to grow and has replaced rural residential buildings as the
main energy consumption and emission source of the building con-
struction sector. This should be kept in mind to understand future en-
ergy conservation and emission reduction strategies. As urbanization
7
Energy Policy 134 (2019) 110949
process continues, rural population will continue to shift to urban areas,
and there will be a lack of demand for new residences in rural areas.
Hence, energy consumption from rural residential construction may
remain at a low level and have a limited impact.
The growth rate of China's construction and completion area has
continued to decline since 2011, with negative growth seen in 2015 and
a near zero growth in 2016. According to the data released by the
National Bureau of Statistics, the per capita residential floor area in
China reached 40.8 m2 in 2016 (NBS, 2017d), which is similar to the
value obtained for OECD countries, such as the United Kingdom,
France, and Japan, at approximately 40 m2 (BERC, 2018). This shows
that China has already caught up with and even surpassed some of the
developed countries with respect to resident housing standards, and
there is little room for growth in the future. In addition, the housing
vacancy rate in China is considerable and has reached approximately
20% (BERC, 2019). Therefore, if unnecessary construction are avoided,
the energy consumption of building construction sector in China is not
expected to rise much in the future.
4.2. Building structure revolution
Changes in the structure type can significantly affect the material
use intensity of a building. In the past ten years, for example, the re-
placement of brick concrete structure with frame-shear and shear-wall
structures has increased the material use intensity of urban residential
Y. Zhang, et al.
buildings. Therefore, the development of new structures that have
sufficient strength, but low material consumption is an effective way to
reduce construction energy use and emissions.
Steel structure is a relatively new type of building structure as
compared to the brick concrete structure, frame-shear structure, and
shear-wall structure. It is suitable for high-rise and long-span buildings
and it consumes less cement Meanwhile, the development of steel
structure has received some support from the Chinese government, and
its use in residential buildings and P&C buildings is being encouraged in
China's building technology policy (MOHURD, 2013). This will help in
reducing China's building construction energy use and emissions and
will promote new low carbon building structures, such as the steel
structure.
4.3. Material industry production efficiency
With respect to the industrial sector, the production efficiency of
building materials has improved as a result of technological progress,
which has greatly reduced energy consumption and emissions in the
building construction sector. However, there exists a gap between
China's production efficiency and the international level of production
efficiency. Aiming towards energy conservation in the building mate-
rials production industry, the government has introduced a series of
policies in recent years. In 2015, the State Council issued “Made in
China (2025)” and proposed to improve the resource utilization effi-
ciency of manufacturing and accelerate the transition from traditional
manufacturing to green manufacturing (Statecouncil, 2015). In 2016,
the “13th Five-Year” Comprehensive work scheme for energy saving
and emission reduction (Statecouncil, 2016) and Industrial Green De-
velopment Plan (MIIT, 2016) proposed that the industrial energy uti-
lization efficiency and cleanliness level should be significantly im-
proved by 2020, and the energy utilization efficiency of key energy-
consuming industries should reach or approach global levels. Hence,
the energy consumption of building material production is likely to
maintain a downward trend in the near future.
Moreover, with the changes at an urban stage in China, the re-
lationship between building construction and demolition will change.
On the one hand, as new complete buildings will reduce, the proportion
of demolition area to new complete area will increase. On the other
hand, the proportion of buildings with high material use intensity
among the demolished buildings will increase, which will increase the
amount of steel recovered. Therefore, scrap ratio may increase sig-
nificantly in China's steel production and reduce the comprehensive
energy consumption per unit of product. This will also have an im-
portant impact on the energy use and emissions of the building con-
struction sector.
4.4. Limitations of this research
This work has some limitations which need to be solved.
(1) In this study, the input data can be divided into three types: the
first type is the data that have great influence on the result and use
official data source, such as completed building floor area and energy
consumption intensity of building material manufacturing. The data
were collected by Nation Bureau of Statistics from official statistical
channels and large-scale systematic surveys, which is the most reliable
data at present and can support this research well. The second type is
also an important input but without official data source, such as ma-
terial use intensity of different types of buildings. For this type, we did
extensive literature research and obtained the data from surveys con-
ducted by many researchers. But it is undeniable that there is still a lack
of large-scale survey data on building construction in China, especially
for informal building types and sparsely populated areas. More work on
this part should be carried out by government or related researchers in
the future. The third type is data, which has a limited impact on the
results and had fewer data sources, was related to transportation energy
8
Energy Policy 134 (2019) 110949
use intensity and on-site construction energy use. In this study, this part
of energy consumption was estimated by referring to existing research.
More attention should also be focused on in this area.
(2) This study mainly discusses the impact of three main factors:
building construction scale, structure type and material production ef-
ficiency. Previous researches have studied the energy consumption and
emissions of building construction or operation activity by using the
Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method with the characteristics
of full decomposition, lack of residuals, ease of use and consistent re-
sults (Ma et al., 2017, 2018; Lu et al., 2016). In addition to the major
impact factors, more work could be done to fully understand the in-
fluence of the construction sector on energy consumption and emis-
sions, quantitatively.
5. Conclusion
5.1. Key findings
Based on the results and discussions above, the key findings of this
study are presented as follows.
● The energy consumption of China's building construction
sector is growing rapidly. The total related energy use by civil
building construction of China in 2016 was 410 million tce, ac-
counting for approximately 9% of the whole society and has quad-
rupled between 2000 and 2016.1.4 billion tons of CO2 was released
during civil building construction in 2016. Of this, 71% emissions
were related to energy and 29% emissions were related to industrial
processes.
● The construction scale of urban residential and P&C buildings
continues to grow and has replaced rural residential buildings
as the main energy consumption and emission source of the
building construction sector. Urban residential, rural residential,
and P&C buildings accounted for 42%, 14%, and 44% of civil
building construction energy use in 2016, respectively, and the
proportion of rural residential buildings decreased continuously
from 27% to 14% during 2000–2016.
● Building material manufacturing consumes the most of energy
among the four stages, and cement and steel are the most en-
ergy-consuming building materials. Building material manu-
facturing accounts for over 80% of energy use of building con-
struction. During the material manufacturing stage, the total
production energy consumption of cement and steel accounted for
33% and 51% of all the building materials, respectively.
5.2. Policy recommendations
In view of the results, the following recommendations are pre-
sented: construction scale is one of the most important driving factors of
energy consumption and emission from the building construction
sector. Therefore, excessive construction and repeated construction will
greatly increase the energy consumption and emissions. With a rapid
increase in the total building floor area, the problem of housing vacancy
in China has begun to be noticed. Based on related research, the va-
cancy rate of urban residential buildings has reached approximately
20% (BERC, 2019). Hence, we suggest that energy saving and emission
reduction work in in the future, with respect to building construction
sector, should focus on the reduction of unnecessary construction ac-
tivities, and improve the usage rate and service life of buildings.
From a technical perspective, improvement in production efficiency
of building materials has greatly reduced the energy consumption and
emissions in the building construction sector. Changes in structure type
can significantly affect the material use intensity of a building.
Therefore, China should continue to promote the formulation and im-
plementation of relevant policies, improve the energy efficiency of
building materials production, and reduce the gap with advanced
Y. Zhang, et al.
international level. In addition, low carbon building structures should
also be promoted to reduce the embodied energy intensity of buildings.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by “the 13th Five-Year” National Key R&D
Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFC0704300) and the authors extend
their gratitude to the State Grid Corporation of China (Contract No.
5202011600UA).
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