【Advances in Applied Energy】千禧年以来住宅建筑终端运行排放的全球转型

• The carbon intensity of global residential building operations declined 1.2% yr ⁻¹ in 2000–2020.

• Uneven energy intensity and shrinking householdsize were keys to decarbonizing residential buildings.

• Appliances(∼-17.7kgCO ₂ /household) decarbonized the most in global residential buildings’ end uses.

• By 2020, global decarbonization totaled 7.1Gt CO ₂ , and the corresponding efficiency was 9.4%.

• Decarbonization is thriving in emergingeconomies, but their intensity still falls behind top economies.

The residential sector is the third-largestenergy consumer and emitter globally and as such is at the forefront of theenergy transition and net-zero emissions pathway. To accelerate the pace ofdecarbonization of residential buildings, this study is the first to present abottom-up assessment framework integrated with the decomposing structuraldecomposition method to evaluate the emission patterns and decarbonizationprocess of residential building operations in 56 countries spanning 12 regionsworldwide from 2000 to 2020. The results show that (1) the operational carbonintensity of global residential buildings has maintained an annual decline of 1.2%over the past two decades, and energy intensity and average household size havebeen key to this decarbonization; (2) end uses have held an increasinglyimportant role in decarbonizing global residential buildings (-46.3 kgs ofcarbon dioxide per household per year), with the largest contributors beingappliances(38.3%), followed by space heating (21.2%) and lighting (12.6%); and(3) although the total decarbonization of global residential buildings was 7.1gigatons of carbon dioxide and achieved a decarbonization efficiency of 9.4%per yr during this time period, regional decarbonization inequality and unevendistribution remained quite large, especially in emerging economy regions.Moreover, the uncertainty and robustness of the assessment framework are alsotested, and adaptive high decarbonization strategies are further proposed forglobal residential buildings. Overall, this study reviews and compares globaland regional performances and motivations for decarbonization to supportnational decarbonization efforts to reach net-zero emissions and advance theglobal residential building sector toward a carbon-free century.

Keywords

Global residential buildings

Operational carbon emissions

Residential end-use activities

Decomposing structural decomposition

High decarbonization strategies

GraphicalAbstract. Global transition of operational carbon in residential buildingssince the millennium: (a) The share of each major emitting region in the totaloperational carbon emissions change in 2020 compared with 2000; (b) Definitionof the twelve emitting regions examined in thisstudy, shaded as in (a); (c-d) Regional trends in cumulative operationaldecarbonization and the corresponding decarbonization efficiency from 2001 to2020 (light to dark colored dots); (e) Cumulative decarbonization and thecorresponding decarbonization efficiency across emitters during the period2001–2020; (f-h) Top 10 countries in average annual decarbonization level ofglobal residential building operations across different emission scales. Notes:Background contours in (c-d) are in units of cumulative decarbonization. Thecumulative carbon emissions for the United States (23.5 GtCO2, decarbonizationefficiency: 8.1%) and China (13.5 GtCO2, 11.1%) are not plotted in (e) due toscale limitations.