Shaping Climate Policy in Urban Infrastructure: an Insight into the Building Sector in China

China is playing an increasingly crucial role in the global effort to combat climate change due to its sheer size and strong economic growth, which is primarily fuelled by coal. While the trajectories pursued by China in the coming decades will have tremendous implications for global climate stabilisation, this paper attempts to address the question of the relationship between the capital investment decisions that enhance building energy efficiency (BEE) today and the subsequent creation of financial capacity to make it possible to scale up climate-friendly energy supply technologies tomorrow.
This analysis shows how the shrewd allocation of financial resources can positively influence
policies related to tackling climate change by managing the quality of developed urban infrastructure.
Its main purpose is to demonstrate the existence of a least-cost trajectory for energy performance improvement strategies in buildings in the context of extremely rapid urbanisation in China. In addition, it seeks to identify appropriate policy and economic instruments allowing cities to approach
the optimal pathways of energy efficiency policydevelopment. Based on a scenario analysis of the energy, environmental and economic consequences of different building efficiencyimplementation pathways, depending on the decisions made today, we demonstrate that maintaining the current BEE standards is not a rational decision from either an economic or an environmental perspective; more stringent efficiency requirements are needed to minimise the costs of the trajectory.

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