Scenario analysis on energy consumption and CO2 emissions reduction potential in building heating sector at community level

Abstract

Energy consumption and carbon emissions of building heating are increasing rapidly. Taking Liaobin coastal economic zone as an example, two scenarios are built to analyze the potential of energy consumption and CO2 emissions reduction from the aspects of laws, regulations, policies and planning. The baseline scenario refers to the traditional way of energy planning and the community energy planning scenario seeks to apply community energy planning within the zone. Energy consumption and CO2 emission are forecast in two scenarios with the driving factors including GDP growth, changes in population size, energy structure adjustment, energy technology progress, and increase of energy efficiency. To improve accuracy of future GDP and population data prediction, an ARIMA (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average model) (1,1,1) model is introduced into GDP prediction and a logistics model is introduced into population prediction. Results show that compared with the baseline scenario, energy consumption levels in the community energy planning scenario are reduced by 140% and CO2 emission levels are reduced by 45%; the short-term and long-term driving factors are analyzed. Policy implications are given for energy conservation and environmental protection.