Dynamic simulation for carbon emission reduction effects of the prefabricated building supply chain under environmental policies

Reducing carbon emissions from the prefabricated buildings (PBs) has become a goal for many nations' governments in achieving low-carbon economic development. However, exploring the impact of environmental policies on the prefabricated building supply chain (PBSC) from the perspective of the supply chain is an issue with complexity and fuzziness. Therefore, this paper integrates environmental and economic impacts in a system dynamics (SD) model and comprehensively simulate the carbon emission reduction effects of PBSC. Major sources of carbon emissions, key factors of carbon emission reduction effects, and possibilities for improvement are discussed. Results show that the low-carbon economic benefits of the PBSC are poor under existing environmental policies. In the single scenario, promoting subsidies, enterprises' investment proportion and carbon price can intensify low-carbon economic benefits, whereas the decrease of free proportion can reduce low-carbon economic benefits. Among them, subsidies play the leading role on the carbon emission reduction effects. Furthermore, a proper combination of emission trading scheme (ETS), government subsidies, and investment in low-carbon technology is both more economic-efficient and environmentally friendly. This research provides support for enterprises in the PBSC adopting low-carbon practices and for governments to formulate environmental policies.