Energy-saving models of housing on display at an expo in Jinan, Shandong. With more buildings coming up, construction companies are being urged to make their buildings greener. Provided to China Daily

An apartment with zero-carbon emission in Chongqing. Provided to China Daily

A demonstration of a zero-carbon emission building in Shanghai. Provided to China Daily

Need for urgency seen as western companies ready for green light on eco-building projects

When Ben Pape, a founder of the UK-China Eco-Cities and Green Building Group, first came to Beijing in the early 1980s, the capital was building the 48-kilometer Third Ring Road. When he came this year, it was working on a seventh, 940 km long.

The frenzied expansion of the capital is only part of the biggest and most rapid population shift in human history. In just three decades, hundreds of millions of people in China have moved from the countryside to the cities, resulting in an incredible mushrooming of building and infrastructure construction.

In 1980 when 20 percent of China's population was classified as urban, the average housing space per head in China's cities was about 7 square meters. The number jumped to 30 sq m in 2011, by which time about half of the country's population lived in cities. Those figures indicate the extent of China's building spree and its effect on the country's environment.

Factories and cars have taken most of the blame for polluting China's air and water, but buildings account for at least 20 percent of China's total energy consumption. This has a major bearing on government plans for reducing energy consumption, says Yang Hongwei, director at the energy efficiency center of the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top planning organization.

With a predicted 1 billion people living in urban areas, with most in bigger apartments, by 2030, China's new leadership is calling for a new model of sustainable urbanization, supported by new types of buildings.

In January, the State Council issued the Green Building Action Plan, a clear indication that the industry is now a policy priority.

In the plan, the government has set ambitious targets, including adding more than 1 billion square meters of green building floor area by 2015 - 14 times the area at the end of last year.

Insiders say that many companies, from real estate developers, architects and building materials suppliers to IT companies and financial institutions, may soon benefit from a boom in the market for green buildings, especially ones from the West.

Pape of the UK-China Eco-Cities and Green Building Group, a government-to-government platform set up in 2010, says the West is in good position to help China because it made a lot of mistakes on the environment and has a lot of experience in trying to right those wrongs.

"The West focused greatly on economics in the past," Pape says. "If you looked at the development of the West about 100 years ago, the damage to the environment was severe.

"There was smog in London, like Beijing has today. I can remember as a young man that if I put my hand out, I couldn't see the end of my fingers. It was unbelievable. Now London is very clean, so given the right policies, the pollution problems can be solved."

Pape says the Chinese government has recognized this, and that after years of educating the public on the importance of livable cities and green buildings, it is high time for action.

In Beijing, from June 1 all new buildings have had to meet the criteria for green buildings. They must be more efficient in the use of energy, water, building material and land, as well as providing a living place that is healthier than conventional buildings.

For NDRC's Yang, a member of the Green Building Action Plan team, the reason behind the initiative is simple: China is the world's largest energy consumer and emitter of greenhouse gases.

He says the country's annual energy consumption surged from 1.38 billion tons of standard coal in 2000 to 3.25 billion tons in 2010, and is expected to jump to 7 billion tons by 2020.

"Buildings, which consume one-fifth of China's energy, are certainly considered a priority in the country in terms of reducing energy consumption and carbon intensity," Yang says.

As a relatively new entrant, China's regulations for green buildings are not as strict as in the West. China has been developing a star-rating system related to energy efficiency and consumption, while Britain requires all new houses to be carbon neutral in 2016, and Copenhagen in Denmark aims to become a zero carbon city by 2015.

Although the standards may not be set as high, many Western companies believe China is the place in which to develop green buildings because of its giant market size.

"Green building is no longer a discussion but a demand in China," says Kristian Lars Ahlmark, a partner Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects of Denmark.

Ahlmark says the potential of the green building market in China is one of the key reasons his company set up an office in Shanghai in 2011, although it had worked on projects in the country since 2002. The global financial crisis of 2008 hit the company hard, and its residential projects in China were stopped.

"It forced our firm to think where they can see steady growth in the years to come. And we think the green building sector in China is the answer."

Ahlmark's firm has grown from three architects to 20 within 18 months of opening the Shanghai branch.

Using the "passive design" concept of energy-efficient building, his firm has worked on a mountainside residential community in Wuxi city in East China's Jiangsu province, where the buildings are designed and positioned to maximize natural light while being sheltered from cold winds.

If you can control the daylight, you can control the energy in the building, Ahlmark says, adding that design alone can greatly reduce energy use before other technologies are applied.

"We expect to double the architects we have now in Shanghai within the next two years because of the momentum in China's green building sector."

Chris Twinn, senior sustainability consultant with Arup, a renowned international company of designers, planners, engineers, consultants and technical specialists, says China is catching up fast in the green buildings sector.

UK-based Arup, noted for its work on the Sydney Opera House, Pompidou center in Paris and for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, is constructing its first zero-carbon building in Hong Kong as a demonstration project for potential clients, especially on the Chinese mainland.

But China's work to promote green buildings is mostly from the top down, Twinn says.

"The politicians say the right thing, pass the regulations and policies but there needs to be improvement from the bottom," he says, adding Chinese clients are interested in green buildings as long as they do not cost more.

When he started working on zero-carbon housing about 15 years ago, the cost was about 30 to 40 percent more expensive than conventional housing. Costs have fallen, but by 2016 they are likely be about 5 percent dearer, he says.

In Hong Kong, his team plans to build the zero-carbon building at zero extra cost. If they succeed, he says, it will be a game changer in the sector.

Meanwhile, the higher costs of green building has a fundamental influence on real estate developers.

Zhang Xuezhou, vice-president of China Real Estate Chamber of Commerce, says the expensive upfront cost is the main challenge for the future development of green buildings in China.

But Stanley Yip, a research associate at the Centre of Urban Planning and Design at Peking University, says the cost very much depends on the technologies used in a design. Based on a research sample of 50 million sq m of China's certified green buildings with one to three-star ratings, the extra cost for green buildings in China can be as low as 0.43 yuan a square meter and as high as 306 yuan ($50; 38 euros) a sq m.

Yip says development of the green-building sector will not move into top gear until a city's GDP exceeds 600 billion yuan a year. In 2011 as many as 16 cities in China had reached that level.

Zhang of the China Real Estate Chamber of Commerce, says incentives are needed to better promote green-building development before more cities become wealthy enough to embrace the sustainable lifestyle.

In May 2012, the government released national subsidies for two-star green buildings of 45 yuan a sq m, and 80 yuan a sq m for three-star ones.

"These incentives are for developers," Zhang says. "Most of them use the best technologies in green buildings for their high-end projects. But it is the ordinary buyers who really decide the market.

"If there were subsidies for buyers, like the government has done with green-energy cars, the sector will grow much faster and on a much bigger scale."

mengjing@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily European Weekly 06/14/2013 page14)