TY - JOUR
T1 - The economic impacts of carbon emission trading scheme on building retrofits
T2 - A case study with U.S. medium office buildings
AU - Lou, Yingli
AU - Yang, Yizhi
AU - Ye, Yunyang
AU - He, Chuan
AU - Zuo, Wangda
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2022/8/1
Y1 - 2022/8/1
N2 - As a popular emission reduction tool, the carbon emission trading scheme (ETS) can potentially add an economic incentive for building owners to retrofit buildings in addition to the cost savings in energy. However, the additional economic benefits of building retrofits brought by ETS has not been quantitively investigated yet. To fill this gap, this study proposed a systematic economic evaluation method to investigate the economic impacts of ETS on building retrofits. The reduction of the payback period and the increase of the return on investment are adopted as evaluation metrics. Using medium office buildings as an example, this study predicted the economic impacts of ETS on building retrofits at four locations in the U.S., and three different carbon prices were investigated. The results show that carbon prices have significant economic impacts on building retrofits. With the relatively low forecasted time-variant carbon prices (around 10 USD per ton), the economic impacts of ETS on building retrofits are small. When carbon prices increase, the impacts of ETS would be up to 25% for 50 USD per ton (current prices in European Union) and 51% for 100 USD per ton. Furthermore, locations with more fossil energy have higher relative changes in the payback period and ROI but are more sensitive to carbon prices.
AB - As a popular emission reduction tool, the carbon emission trading scheme (ETS) can potentially add an economic incentive for building owners to retrofit buildings in addition to the cost savings in energy. However, the additional economic benefits of building retrofits brought by ETS has not been quantitively investigated yet. To fill this gap, this study proposed a systematic economic evaluation method to investigate the economic impacts of ETS on building retrofits. The reduction of the payback period and the increase of the return on investment are adopted as evaluation metrics. Using medium office buildings as an example, this study predicted the economic impacts of ETS on building retrofits at four locations in the U.S., and three different carbon prices were investigated. The results show that carbon prices have significant economic impacts on building retrofits. With the relatively low forecasted time-variant carbon prices (around 10 USD per ton), the economic impacts of ETS on building retrofits are small. When carbon prices increase, the impacts of ETS would be up to 25% for 50 USD per ton (current prices in European Union) and 51% for 100 USD per ton. Furthermore, locations with more fossil energy have higher relative changes in the payback period and ROI but are more sensitive to carbon prices.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.buildenv.2022.109311
DO - 10.1016/j.buildenv.2022.109311
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85133281038
SN - 0360-1323
VL - 221
JO - Building and Environment
JF - Building and Environment
M1 - 109311
ER -