Assessing energy efficiency in the built environment: A quantile regression analysis of CO2 emissions from buildings and manufacturing sector
Awan A. Kocoglu M. Subhan M. Utepkaliyeva K. bte Mohamed Yusoff N.Y. Hossain M.E.
1 July 2025Elsevier Ltd
Energy and Buildings
2025#338
Achieving sustainable development has emerged as a global emergency in response to environmental challenges, including the need to mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The built environment, encompassing both buildings and manufacturing activities, is critical to achieving net zero, given its contribution of approximately 37% to global energy-related CO2 emissions. While earlier research explored CO2 emissions broadly, we lack a clear picture of how built environments respond to various environmental and economic factors, especially as economies modernize their infrastructure and cities. This research provides insights into the sustainable transformation of the built environment by analyzing the impact of energy efficiency, urbanization, industrial development, and non-renewable energy on building and manufacturing-based CO2 emissions in newly industrialized countries during 1990–2020. To this end, the study employed the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) that enables analysis of heterogeneous effects across the conditional distribution of emissions, extending beyond conventional mean-based estimations. The findings from the MMQR show that improvement in energy efficiency mitigates CO2 emissions from the built environment. Specifically, a 1% improvement in energy efficiency results in a reduction in CO2 emissions ranging from 0.913% to 0.835% across all quantiles. The “Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC)” holds for built environment-based CO2 emissions in sample countries. The results indicate that non-renewable energy consumption and industrialization significantly increase emissions from the built environment. Policy efforts should prioritize renewable energy sources, energy-efficient designs, and a balanced growth path to steer the building sector toward a lower carbon footprint for long-term environmental sustainability.
Built Environment , CO2 emissions from Buildings , EKC , Non-renewable energy , Urbanization
Text of the article Перейти на текст статьи
Kashmir Institute of Economics, University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Pakistan
Institute of Energy Policy and Research, Universiti Tenaga Nasional Malaysia, Malaysia
Erciyes University, Kayseri, 38280, Turkey
Prague University of Economics and Business, Faculty of Finance and Accounting. W, Churchill Sq. 4, Prague, 3,130 67, Czech Republic
Marwadi University Research Center, Faculty of Management Studies, Marwadi University, Gujarat, Rajkot, 360003, India
Department of Economics, Atyrau University Named After Kh. Dosmukhamedov, Atyrau, Kazakhstan
UNITEN Business School, Institute of Energy Policy and Research, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia
Department of Agricultural Sciences, Texas State University, San Marcos, 78666, TX, United States
Applied Science Research Center, Applied Science Private University, Amman, Jordan
Kashmir Institute of Economics
Institute of Energy Policy and Research
Erciyes University
Prague University of Economics and Business
Marwadi University Research Center
Department of Economics
UNITEN Business School
Department of Agricultural Sciences
Applied Science Research Center
10 лет помогаем публиковать статьи Международный издатель
Книга Публикация научной статьи Волощук 2026 Book Publication of a scientific article 2026