Chinese walker

“This is not the White House.” Qiu Baoxing, China’s deputy minister of construction, stood before a screen showing an elaborate pearl-colored palace at an international building conference last March. “This is the office building of a district government,” he said. He was not simply outing another local government official misusing funds to build palatial digs. China’s biggest construction official was aiming directly at big building projects that, due to their heavy use of materials and energy, are helping to bankrupt China on an environmental level. According to a recent report by Qiu’s office, 95% of existing buildings in China are energy intensive, bleeding energy waste and consuming two or three times as much energy as that in most industrialised countries. And China’s incomes%26mdash;and its buildings%26mdash;are just starting to grow.

But as concerns heat up over its energy use and impact on the planet, the international call for sustainable buildings, already being heard in cities across the US and Europe, is starting to spread on the world’s biggest construction site.

That call was amplified a few days after Qiu spoke in Beijing by the UN, which released a report noting that the global building sector accounts for 30% to 40% of the world’s energy use, much of that manageable through existing technologies like insulation,

insulated windows, solar shading, humidity-proof facades, more efficient lighting and electrical appliances. And crucially, it noted, such easy energy reductions%26mdash;what environmentalists call “low hanging fruit”%26mdash;would dramatically lower the carbon dioxide emissions that are heating up the planet. And China could certainly use some of that, with temperatures breaking records and another summer of extreme weather.

Incentives for change

Though greenhouse gases have not always been a priority for China’s leaders, the rhetoric is getting stronger. “More work on energy conservation and emissions reduction is urgently required to deal with global climate change,” premier Wen Jiabao said recently. No doubt, highly-polluting industries, like coal and concrete factories, play a significant role. But as the Ministry of Construction also noted, the building sector is the country’s easiest target for reduction and conservation. If China can make all of today`s big buildings more energy efficient, the ministry concluded, the country could reduce its coal use by 135 million tonnes a year.

There are of course other reasons for China to turn its grey buildings green; there is a considerable monetary incentive. As oil supplies become harder to reach as half of the country’s energy goes into buildings, up from 10% in the 1970s, green design is no longer just a nice or cool thing to do; it’s becoming an economic necessity.

That’s not just the thinking of Qiu or environmental minister Pan Yue

can often be heard extolling the virtues of energy efficiency, twou003cbr />elements at the center of the current Five Year Plan and its vision ofu003cbr />sustainable development and a “harmonious society.” Recent Partyu003cbr />meetings have seen Hu and Wen waxing on the possibilities of usingu003cbr />price, tax and other financial measures to promote energy saving inu003cbr />construction and curb waste.u003cbr />But how all the talk on sustainability will turn into au003cbr />bricks-and-mortar reality is the big green elephant in the room.u003cbr />Eyeing the millions who will pour into China’s cities in the nextu003cbr />decade, the Construction Ministry has ordered new buildings to be 50u003cbr />percent more efficient by 2010 than they were in 2005 and hasu003cbr />announced stricter zoning laws for government buildings and energyu003cbr />intensive buildings. But last year, as construction continued at au003cbr />feverish pace, (two billion square meters of space are built per year)u003cbr />the country lowered its energy consumption per unit of gross domesticu003cbr />product only by 1.2 percent, well short of its four percent a yearu003cbr />target.u003cbr />If the government’s green intent is clear, its success in greening theu003cbr />fast-growing property market has not been so. “China got a late startu003cbr />in green architecture, and with rapid urbanization at the beginning,u003cbr />and inadequate theory behind it, there is still a low level ofu003cbr />awareness and an imperfect development of the market mechanisms,” saysu003cbr />Prof. Kai Yan, the vice chairman of the China Real Estate and Housingu003cbr />Research Association. While 95 percent of buildings approved foru003cbr />construction last year met the government’s various efficiencyu003cbr />standards, Qiu, at the Ministry of Construction, conceded that over 80u003cbr />percent of the finished buildings—covering some 2 billion squareu003cbr />meters in area—ignored them outright.u003cbr />”In China there is an openness to new ideas and an increasing will foru003cbr />”,1]

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; one of China’s biggest fans of green building is Hu Jintao. The president with a degree in water conservancy engineering from Tsinghua University can often be heard extolling the virtues of energy efficiency, two elements at the centre of the current Five Year Plan and its vision of sustainable development and creating a “harmonious society.” Recent Party meetings have seen Hu and Wen waxing on the possibilities of using price, tax and other financial measures to curb waste and promote energy saving in construction.

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