Is the U.S. Building Sector on a Low-Carbon Transition Trajectory? - Evidence from Building Performance Big Data

Abstract

Nearly one-third of total energy consumption is attributed to the building sector in the U.S, which also accounts for around 40% of CO2 emissions. The decarbonization of the U.S. economy, like other countries, largely depends on the low-carbon transition of the building sector. However, while most studies focus on the technical and economic aspects of decarbonizing buildings such as the studies on deep energy retrofits at the individual building level, little is known in terms of whether the U.S. building sector in the past is on a low-carbon transition trajectory from a whole sector perspective. To respond to this gap of knowledge, this study examined the building performance big data from the Building Performance Database (BPD) which stores the building performance data for more than 1 million buildings in the U.S. The results indicate that different sub-sectors experience different levels of decarbonization. For instance, the education building sector does not experience obvious energy efficiency improvements over the past 100 years, while the single-family house stock has shown an obvious energy efficiency improvement from 2000. Buildings in different states also show different decarbonization trend. For instance, the electric energy use intensity (electric EUI) of single-family houses in California and Florida has shown a very steady decrease since 1950, while Virginia does not show this trend in this aspect. This study demonstrates the spatial-temporal complexity of low-carbon transitions of the building sector in the U.S. Policies needs to be formulated to facilitate low-carbon transitions of building sectors considering this complexity.