Accounting for 21% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, buildings play a crucial role in climate change mitigation. Demand-side policies offer large energy and GHG emission reduction potentials. The effects of broader sectoral policies at the global level beyond energy efficiency improvements, including sufficiency and structural changes, and their interaction with cross-sectoral climate policies are, however, still uncle...

The building sector in China is responsible for 40% of total energy‐related CO 2 emissions, driven by its large population, continuous economic growth, and construction boom. In addition to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from energy use, buildings drive significant emissions for construction activities and production of energy‐intensive materials, such as steel and cement. While supply‐side energy strategies have been extensiv...

As urban areas are increasingly exposed to high temperatures, lack of access to residential thermal comfort is a challenge with dramatic consequences for human health and well-being. Air-conditioning (AC) can provide relief against heat stress, but a massive AC uptake could entail stark energy demand growth and mitigation challenges. Slums pose additional risks due to poor building quality, failing to provide adequate shelter...

Buildings account for 36% of global final energy demand and are key to mitigating climate change. Assessing the evolution of the global building stock and its energy demand is critical to support mitigation strategies. However, most global studies lack granularity and overlook heterogeneity in the building sector, limiting the evaluation of demand transformation scenarios. We develop global residential building scenarios along...

Process-based integrated assessment models (IAMs) project long-term transformation pathways in energy and land-use systems under what-if assumptions. IAM evaluation is necessary to improve the models’ usefulness as scientific tools applicable in the complex and contested domain of climate change mitigation. We contribute the first comprehensive synthesis of process-based IAM evaluation research, drawing on a wide range of exam...