A Century of Building Dynamics and Its Resource and Environmental Impacts in China
Abstract
The last few decades have eye-witnessed a rapid construction of buildings in China under the powerful drivers of urbanization, and the building stocks are expected to continually grow in the future. The growth of buildings has caused and will continue to cause, on the one hand, huge billion tons of resource consumption (e.g., iron and steel, cement, sand, and gravel, etc.) and on the other, massive greenhouse gas emissions. To meet the SDG-13 and carbon neutral, accounting the building dynamics and corresponding resource and environmental impacts especially in China shows high significance in providing data basis for policymakers in the building sector owing to the important position of Chinese buildings both to China and the world. This study has conducted a retrospect and prospect accounting of Chinese building flows and stocks (F&S) from 1950 to 2050 in mainland China at the province level by dynamic material flow analysis (dMFA) method. The construction materials consumption and indirect carbon emission were also counted with the building stock dynamics. We found that the floor area per capita (FAPC) of China had increased from less than 10 m2/cap in 1950 finally to 73 m2/cap in 2050. Jiangsu took the largest proportion of total floor area (10%) among all provinces in recent years. From 2017 to 2050, annual 4 billion tons of construction materials (i.e., cement 0.55 billion, iron and steel 0.18 billion tons, and timber 0.02 billion tons per year) will be demanded and a total of 78.4 billion tons will be demolished. For carbon emission, accumulated indirect carbon emission of Chinese building dynamics historically accounted 14% of China’s total carbon emission by 2016. Ideally, an indirect carbon emission reduction potential of 8 billion CO2 equivalents (CO2eq) totally will occur from 2017 to 2050 where iron and steel production accounts for 60%.
Author(s)
| Name |
Affiliation |
|
Qiance Liu
|
University of Southern Denmark |
|
Gang Liu
|
University of Southern Denmark |
« Back to Posters
