Pathways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from China’s urban building expansion

In China, the urban expansion is projected to increase carbon dioxide emissions from buildings. The development of zero-carbon buildings is a strategy for deep decarbonization in the building sector. However, a comprehensive framework to evaluate mitigation potential, implementation pathways, and cost-benefit analyses for future zero-carbon building deployment is lacking. Here, we combine data on life cycle carbon dioxide emissions for 278 cities in China from 2006 to 2022 with a building carbon emission simulation model, socio-economic pathways scenarios, and an optimization model to assess the mitigation potential and associated costs of deploying zero-carbon buildings. The results indicate that under a plausible baseline scenario, total building carbon dioxide emissions are projected to increase to 6.42 gigatonnes by 2030 and reach 8.73 gigatonnes by 2060. An optimal deployment strategy with a 1.5% annual adoption rate of zero-carbon buildings could achieve a 1.21 gigatonne reduction in annual carbon dioxide emissions at implementation costs of $446.8 billion. Our study offers insights into the design and implementation of zero-carbon dioxide building strategies in China, and may inspire similar actions in other countries.