Driving force analysis of carbon emissions in China’s building industry: 2000–2015

•The steel stock in China's construction industry is calculated.•The energy consumption of China's construction industry is calculated.•The driving factors of carbon emissions in China's construction industry are analyzed.•Economic output effect and per capita iron and steel accumulation effect are two main factors affecting building carbon emissions. China's building industry is the industry with the largest carbon emissions. In this study, Chinese buildings were divided into three categories: rural residential buildings, urban residential buildings and public buildings. The building steel stock was calculated, and the five contributing factors of China's building carbon emissions from 2000 to 2015 were analyzed by factor decomposition analysis and Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) model. They were energy intensity, energy emission coefficient, per capita building steel stock, economic output level and per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This study found that China's building steel stock had increased from 1.32 billion tons in 2000 to 2.89 billion tons in 2015, and its building energy consumption had increased from 264 million tons of standard coal in 2000 to 868 million tons in 2015. The other four factors promoted to the growth of building carbon emissions except for the energy emission coefficient. The biggest contributing factor was the level of economic output, with an average annual contribution of CO2 of 1.146 billion tons. And the second biggest factor contributing was the per capita building steel stock. Therefore, China should focus on the impact of these two factors on building carbon emissions in future.