title: Short-Lived Buildings in China: Impacts on Water, Energy, and Carbon Emissions.
abstract: This paper has changed the vague understanding that "the short-lived buildings have huge environmental footprints (EF)" into a concrete one. By estimating the annual floor space of buildings demolished and calibrating the average building lifetime in China, this paper compared the EF under various assumptive extended buildings' lifetime scenarios based on time-series environmental-extended input-output model. Results show that if the average buildings' lifetime in China can be extended from the current 23.2 years to their designed life expectancy, 50 years, in 2011, China can reduce 5.8 Gt of water withdrawal, 127.1 Mtce of energy consumption, and 426.0 Mt of carbon emissions, each of which is equivalent to the corresponding annual EF of Belgium, Mexico, and Italy. These findings will urge China to extend the lifetime of existing and new buildings, in order to reduce the EF from further urbanization. This paper also verifies that the lifetime of a product or the replacement rate of a sector is a very important factor that influences the cumulative EF. When making policies to reduce the EF, adjusting people's behaviors to extend the lifetime of products or reduce the replacement rate of sectors may be a very simple and cost-effective option.
authors.affiliation: Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, and Center for Earth System Science, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, China.|Joint Center for Global Change Studies (JCGCS) , Beijing 100875, China.
authors.forename: Wenjia
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Cai
authors.affiliation: Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, and Center for Earth System Science, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, China.|State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (SKLESPC), and School of Environment, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Liyang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Wan
authors.affiliation: State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (SKLESPC), and School of Environment, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, China.|Roland Berger Strategy Consultants , Beijing 100027, China.
authors.forename: Yongkai
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, and Center for Earth System Science, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, China.|State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (SKLESPC), and School of Environment, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Can
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Building Energy Research Center, Tsinghua University , Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Lishen
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lin
mesh_terms: D001530:Belgium; D002245:Carbon Dioxide / Q000032:analysis*; D002681:China; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D004736:Energy-Generating Resources; D004777:Environment; D006798:Housing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D007558:Italy; D008800:Mexico; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D014507:Urbanization; D014867:Water
chemical_list: D014867:Water; D002245:Carbon Dioxide