Associate Researcher Dr.Pei Liu published a research article in Applied Energy

On 25 Jul, Associate Researcher Dr.Pei Liupublished a research article entitled “CO₂ emissions from urban buildings at the city scale: System dynamic projections and potential mitigation policies” in Applied Energy.This articleis co-authored by Prof.Borong Lin fromDepartment of Building Science and Technology of Tsinghua University and Prof.John C. Little fromDepartment of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Virginia Tech. Applied Energy is a famous SCI journal in the field of engineering. It’s CiteScore is 16.4 and 5-Year Impact Factor 9.086.

To reduce energy-related CO₂ emissions from the urban building sector, multiple diverse energy efficiency policies are often simultaneously implemented by different government entities. Thus, evaluating and quantifying the effects of these policies are important for improving their efficacy and prioritizing them. In this paper, a projection of the long-term CO₂ emissions from city-scale urban buildings whose energy use and construction are governed by multiple diverse policies is presented. A system dynamics (SD) model is established to simulate the causal path through which different policies directly and indirectly affect the energy use of and CO₂ emissions from buildings in the urban building stock, and the model is applied to Beijing, China. The results show that under the existing set of policies, the primary energy use by urban buildings in Beijing will peak around 2025 and that energy-related CO₂ emissions will peak around 2022. The model also reveals interference between the policy for promoting green building construction and the policy limiting the urban building stock area. Targeted measures for improving and prioritizing these policies are suggested, and implications for policy design and implementations are proposed. The framework developed in this study can be used not only to project long-term energy-related emissions from building sectors but also to evaluate the effects of policies on emissions. Suggestions for adapting the model to more general cases are provided.

Fig. 1. Framework of the proposed system dynamics model.

Fig. 2. Projected (a) primary energy use of and (b) CO₂ emissions from the urban building stock.

Dr.Pei Liu’s research interests are system-dynamic assessment of policies in the key fields of energy consumption, such as transportation and building sectors. His researches are published in Journal of Cleaner Production,Journal of Environmental Management, and Building and Environment. This research published in Applied Energy applies the systems-engineering method to the field of buildings sector. It provides insights into the policy making, policy assessment, and policy optimization in this sector, and it is a breakthrough in the interdisciplinary research of School of Business.

Link of the article:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2020.115546