A Review of Building Carbon Emission Accounting Methods under Low-Carbon Building Background

With the continuous development of the global economy, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions are persistently increasing, making global warming an indisputable fact. As a high-energy consuming industry, the building industry has gradually emerged as the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions during urban expansion. Consequently, countries are exploring sustainable development pathways for low-carbon buildings to minimize the detrimental impact caused by the construction industry. This paper summarizes the current status of low-carbon building development and, through literature analysis concerning carbon standard systems and carbon emission accountings, discusses the challenges and possible improvements for the future. Establishing a quantitative evaluation tool for carbon emissions and elucidating accounting methods in the construction field is fundamental and a prerequisite for comprehensively studying low-carbon buildings throughout their life cycle. The challenges of low-carbon building development are as follows: (1) lack of a set of carbon emission measurement standards that can be commonly used internationally, (2) lack of a deep and systematic study of the theory of carbon emission accountings and (3) difficulty in recognizing carbon emission boundaries and related data for existing carbon emission accounting methods. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the current progress in low-carbon building development, along with an examination and optimization of the application of carbon emission accounting methodologies within construction to address the challenges.