Carbon-Dioxide Mitigation of Prefabricated Residential Buildings in China: an Urbanization-Based Estimation

The transformation of the construction industry is imminent, and prefabricated residential buildings hold the promise of mitigating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the industry. The study employed a modeling approach of life cycle inventory (LCI) to quantify the embodied CO2 emission of prefabricated and cast-in-situ concrete residential buildings in China. Besides, three provinces were selected to estimate the benefits of mitigating CO2 inherited in the country’s urbanization. Results showed that the embodied CO2 reduction of prefabricated buildings was 50 $\mathrm{k}\mathrm{g}/\mathrm{m}2$ compared to that of cast-in-situ buildings. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021 to 2025), the mitigation of CO2 emissions associated with prefabrication instead of cast-in-situ of the selected provinces were about 181 million tons, presenting a significant mitigation potential for reaching China’s 2060 carbon-neutral pledge.