Operational Carbon Change in Commercial Buildings under the Carbon Neutral Goal: A LASSO–WOA Approach

The rapid growth of energy consumption in commercial building operations has hindered the pace of carbon emission reduction in the building sector in China. This study used historical data to model the carbon emissions of commercial building operations, the LASSO regression was applied to estimate the model results, and the whale optimization algorithm was used to optimize the nonlinear parameter. The key findings show the following: (1) The major driving forces of carbon emissions from commercial buildings in China were found to be the population size and energy intensity of carbon emissions, and their elastic coefficients were 0.6346 and 0.2487, respectively. (2) The peak emissions of the commercial building sector were 1264.81 MtCO2, and the peak year was estimated to be 2030. Overall, this study analyzed the historical emission reduction levels and prospective peaks of carbon emissions from China’s commercial buildings from a new perspective. The research results are helpful for governments and decision makers to formulate effective emission reduction policies and can also provide references for the low-carbon development of other countries and regions.