Abstract
Rapid and large scale construction activities consume significant resources and make impacts on the environment. To support policy for emission reduction and route of low-carbon society development, this paper estimated building stocks and building embodied carbon emissions (BECEs) in China’s 31 provinces from 1997 to 2016 by material flow analysis (MFA). Furthermore, global and local Moran’s indices were employed to investigate the geographical clustering patterns, and temporal and spatial decomposition models were proposed to identify the driving forces. The results reveal the total BECEs has boomed from 9.67 billion tons in 1997 to 28.99 billion tons in 2016. BECEs in 31 provinces have experienced consistent increase but obvious differences in growth rate, and are spatially inclined to decrease from eastern coastal regions to western inland regions. The change of spatial agglomeration pattern is complex and variable. It presents that a long and narrow “H-L agglomeration” is located in the two northernmost provinces and the other 29 provinces enforce a sequence arrangement with an order of “H–H”, “L–H”, “H–L”, and “L–L” from east to west. Temporal decomposition results show that investment scale, economic level, and population density are the main driving forces for the increase of BECEs from both national and provincial levels, while the main reasons for the decrease are technical level and return on investment. Spatial decomposition results demonstrate that population density and provincial area are the main driving forces for the difference between provincial and national average, and others cause the difference among provinces.
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The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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We are very grateful to the editor and reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions on the manuscript.
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This work is funded by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (No. 2016YFA0602803).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Jing Bai carried out the literature search, data collection, statistical analysis, and first draft of the manuscript editing. Jiansheng Qu performed the manuscript review and provided funding acquisition. All authors have read and approved the content of the manuscript.
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Bai, J., Qu, J. Investigating the spatiotemporal variability and driving factors of China’s building embodied carbon emissions. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 19186–19201 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11971-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11971-x