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A global comparison of building decarbonization scenarios by 2050 towards 1.5–2 °C targets

Abstract

Buildings play a key role in the transition to a low-carbon-energy system and in achieving Paris Agreement climate targets. Analyzing potential scenarios for building decarbonization in different socioeconomic contexts is a crucial step to develop national and transnational roadmaps to achieve global emission reduction targets. This study integrates building stock energy models for 32 countries across four continents to create carbon emission mitigation reference scenarios and decarbonization scenarios by 2050, covering 60% of today’s global building emissions. These decarbonization pathways are compared to those from global models. Results demonstrate that reference scenarios are in all countries insufficient to achieve substantial decarbonization and lead, in some regions, to significant increases, i.e., China and South America. Decarbonization scenarios lead to substantial carbon reductions within the range projected in the 2 °C scenario but are still insufficient to achieve the decarbonization goals under the 1.5 °C scenario.
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Category

Academic article

Language

English

Author(s)

  • Clara Camarasa
  • Érika Mata
  • Juan Pablo Jiménez Navarro
  • Janet Reyna
  • Paula Bezerra
  • Gerd Brantes Angelkorte
  • Wei Feng
  • Faidra Filippidou
  • Sebastian Forthuber
  • Chioke Harris
  • Nina Holck Sandberg
  • Sotiria Ignatiadou
  • Lukas Kranzl
  • Jared Langevin
  • Xu Liu
  • Andreas Müller
  • Rafael Soria
  • Daniel Villamar
  • Gabriela Prata Dias
  • Joel Wanemark
  • Katarina Yaramenka

Affiliation

  • SINTEF Community / Architecture, Materials and Structures
  • Denmark
  • IVL Svenska Miljöinstitutet AB
  • Netherlands
  • Austria
  • USA
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • National Renewable Energy Laboratory
  • Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
  • Ecuador
  • University San Francisco, Quito

Year

2022

Published in

Nature Communications

Volume

13

Issue

1

View this publication at Norwegian Research Information Repository