Marginal abatement cost and carbon reduction potential outlook of key energy efficiency technologies in China's building sector to 2030

China achieved an energy savings of 67.5 Mtce in the building sector at the end of the 11th Five-Year Plan and set a new target of 116 Mtce by the end of the 12th Five-Year Plan. In this paper, an improved bottom-up model is developed to assess the carbon abatement potential and marginal abatement cost (MAC) of 34 selected energy-saving technologies/measures for China's building sector. The total reduction potential is 499.8 million t-CO2 by 2030. 4.8 Gt-CO2 potential will be achieved cumulatively to 2030. By 2030, total primary energy consumption of Chinese building sector will rise continuously to 1343 Mtce in the reference scenario and 1114 Mtce in the carbon reduction scenario. Total carbon dioxide emission will rise to 2.39 Gt-CO2 and 1.9 Gt-CO2 in two scenarios separately. The average carbon abatement cost of the aforementioned technologies is 19.5 $/t-CO2. The analysis reveals that strengthening successfully energy-saving technologies is important, especially for the residential building sector. The central government's direct investments in such technologies should be reduced without imposing significant negative effects. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.