International Industrial Ecology Day 2021

The buildings sector accounts for a major proportion of China’s energy use. It is also a key sector to address both global climate change and China’s commitment to achieving CO2 peak around 2030. To reduce CO2 emissions from the buildings sector, multiple diverse energy-efficiency policies are implemented. Although studies have investigated the effects of building-related policies on reducing CO2 emissions, the health co-benefits of these climate change oriented policies remain unexplored. This study utilizes the system dynamics approach and develops a health co-benefits based multiple energy policies assessment (h-MEPA) framework. The h-MEPA framework couples three constituent models: (1) the urban building stock and energy use model, which estimates the effect of policies on reducing building energy use; (2) the energy structure model, which transfers energy use into CO2 and air pollutants emissions; and (3) the co-benefits model, which calculates the social benefit from CO2 reduction and the benefits of averted morbidity and mortality from air pollutants emissions reduction. The h-MEPA framework is applied to Beijing. The results show that with the current set of policies, both CO2 and air pollutants emissions from the urban buildings in Beijing will peak before 2025. Co-benefits increase with the reduction of CO2 and air pollutants emissions. Moreover, the increasing rate of co-benefits is higher than those of CO2 and air pollutants reduction due to the rapid increase in medical expenditure and value of statistical life (VSL). The results also show that the co-benefit contributions from different building subtypes are different. To further increase co-benefits, policies should emphasize to increase the energy performance of energy-retrofitted buildings and to improve the indoor environment quality (IEQ) of green buildings.