Lock-in effect of infrastructures metabolism in China's residential centralized heating: View from consumption and production end

IF 10.5 1区工程技术 Q1 CONSTRUCTION & BUILDING TECHNOLOGY

Sustainable Cities and Society Pub Date : 2025-02-01 DOI:10.1016/j.scs.2024.106067

Yan Li , Kairui You , Weiguang Cai

{"title":"Lock-in effect of infrastructures metabolism in China's residential centralized heating: View from consumption and production end","authors":"Yan Li , Kairui You , Weiguang Cai","doi":"10.1016/j.scs.2024.106067","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Residential centralized heating (RCH) is dominated form of heating for residents in Chinese northern area. Long lifespan caused a slow metabolism of RCH infrastructures, hindering the adoption of new and clean heating techniques and leading to a severe lock-in effect. However, the lock-in effect of RCH infrastructure metabolism is unclear. This study developed stock dynamic of RCH infrastructure coupling techniques metabolism, and further quantified the lock-in effect of RCH infrastructures. We also assessed the decarbonization potential and cost-effectiveness of retrofitting and early retirement for RCH infrastructures. The results represent: 1) In 2021, the CO<sub>2</sub> emissions and heating consumption of RCH increased to 263.56 MtCO<sub>2</sub> and 541.36 TWh, respectively. 2) Stock RCH infrastructures will result in 14.77 PWh of heating consumption and 4.30 GtCO<sub>2</sub> of emissions during their rest life. 3) Unlocking of RCH infrastructures can achieve a significant heating saving and decarbonization. If all stock buildings follow latest standard, national heating unit heating area will decrease by 30.63 %. Replacing coal-fired boilers can reduce heating emission factor by 3.22–18.26 %. Meanwhile, building retrofitting and early retirement of coal-fired boiler have great cost-effectiveness. The results of this study can help policy-makers understand the lock-in effect of current RCH, find potential unlocking objectives and formulate province-specific RCH decarbonization policies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48659,"journal":{"name":"Sustainable Cities and Society","volume":"119 ","pages":"Article 106067"},"PeriodicalIF":10.5000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Sustainable Cities and Society","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210670724008898","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CONSTRUCTION & BUILDING TECHNOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Residential centralized heating (RCH) is dominated form of heating for residents in Chinese northern area. Long lifespan caused a slow metabolism of RCH infrastructures, hindering the adoption of new and clean heating techniques and leading to a severe lock-in effect. However, the lock-in effect of RCH infrastructure metabolism is unclear. This study developed stock dynamic of RCH infrastructure coupling techniques metabolism, and further quantified the lock-in effect of RCH infrastructures. We also assessed the decarbonization potential and cost-effectiveness of retrofitting and early retirement for RCH infrastructures. The results represent: 1) In 2021, the CO₂ emissions and heating consumption of RCH increased to 263.56 MtCO₂ and 541.36 TWh, respectively. 2) Stock RCH infrastructures will result in 14.77 PWh of heating consumption and 4.30 GtCO₂ of emissions during their rest life. 3) Unlocking of RCH infrastructures can achieve a significant heating saving and decarbonization. If all stock buildings follow latest standard, national heating unit heating area will decrease by 30.63 %. Replacing coal-fired boilers can reduce heating emission factor by 3.22–18.26 %. Meanwhile, building retrofitting and early retirement of coal-fired boiler have great cost-effectiveness. The results of this study can help policy-makers understand the lock-in effect of current RCH, find potential unlocking objectives and formulate province-specific RCH decarbonization policies.

Abstract Image

查看原文本刊更多论文

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Sustainable Cities and Society Social Sciences-Geography, Planning and Development

CiteScore

22.00

自引率

13.70%

发文量

810

审稿时长

27 days

期刊介绍： Sustainable Cities and Society (SCS) is an international journal that focuses on fundamental and applied research to promote environmentally sustainable and socially resilient cities. The journal welcomes cross-cutting, multi-disciplinary research in various areas, including: 1. Smart cities and resilient environments; 2. Alternative/clean energy sources, energy distribution, distributed energy generation, and energy demand reduction/management; 3. Monitoring and improving air quality in built environment and cities (e.g., healthy built environment and air quality management); 4. Energy efficient, low/zero carbon, and green buildings/communities; 5. Climate change mitigation and adaptation in urban environments; 6. Green infrastructure and BMPs; 7. Environmental Footprint accounting and management; 8. Urban agriculture and forestry; 9. ICT, smart grid and intelligent infrastructure; 10. Urban design/planning, regulations, legislation, certification, economics, and policy; 11. Social aspects, impacts and resiliency of cities; 12. Behavior monitoring, analysis and change within urban communities; 13. Health monitoring and improvement; 14. Nexus issues related to sustainable cities and societies; 15. Smart city governance; 16. Decision Support Systems for trade-off and uncertainty analysis for improved management of cities and society; 17. Big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence applications and case studies; 18. Critical infrastructure protection, including security, privacy, forensics, and reliability issues of cyber-physical systems. 19. Water footprint reduction and urban water distribution, harvesting, treatment, reuse and management; 20. Waste reduction and recycling; 21. Wastewater collection, treatment and recycling; 22. Smart, clean and healthy transportation systems and infrastructure;