Historical carbon abatement in the commercial building operation: China versus the US

Abstract Building is the “last mile” sector in carbon neutrality transition, and commercial buildings have the largest decarbonization potential using current strategies and technologies. This study focused on China and the United States (US) to assess carbon-dioxide (CO2) abatement in commercial building operations at different emission scales and investigate the carbon abatement efficiency of the two countries from 2001 to 2018. The results show that: (i) Economic efficiency and energy intensity are key to reducing CO2 intensity in Chinese and American commercial buildings, respectively; (ii) Generally, CO2 abatement efficiency in China was 1.1–1.9 times that of the US, although CO2 abatement in China and the US in 2001–2018 was close [China: 1451.89 (±549.05) mega-tons of CO2, US: 1929.84 (±757.36) mega-tons of CO2]; (iii) Ridge regression tested the robustness of CO2 abatement results of the assessment model successfully. Furthermore, the study mapped paths for energy efficiency improvement in commercial buildings in China and the US to explore the strategy that best decarbonizes buildings. Overall, this study covers the research gap on a carbon abatement assessment tool for different economies or regions to compare the historical carbon abatement features on building operation.