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Buildings for a Better Future

While many think that this growth will take place in China’s high-profile urban centres, much of it will, in fact, take place in the country’s booming small- and medium-sized cities, which are benefiting from the country’s reform and opening policies as never before.

But, for every silver lining, there is a dark cloud.

On average, city dwellers use three times more energy than their rural counterparts. Soaring demand for metropolitan living and working space is fuelling a booming construction sector, and rising incomes and living standards mean that electric appliances are proliferating nationwide like never before. At the turn of the millennium, China consumed about 8 percent of the total energy used in the world, more than any nation except the United States. At current rates, this figure will double by 2020, according to Chinese estimates. This prospect is giving rise to serious concern, both in China and around the world.

Is such growth sustainable?

China has relatively few fuel-resource options. Despite the use of clean-coal technologies in urban centres in recent years, the unregulated burning of coal—the country’s most abundant fossil fuel—has already polluted much of the country. Acid rain now falls on many Chinese cities. China’s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) estimates that economic losses from pollution may be valued at nearly 10 percent of China’s GDP (gross domestic product). Were China to follow historic trends of the West in its development, residential and commercial building energy consumption could soon skyrocket to account for as much as one-third of the nation’s total energy use. If coal continues to be China’s fuel of choice, and if China’s buildings continue to multiply and consume energy as they do now, the resultant increase in the country’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will dwarf any pollution reductions achieved elsewhere. The question is: can anything be done to ameliorate or avoid this nightmare scenario?

Many individuals, organizations, and the Chinese Government feel that a committed drive toward sustainability is the only way that China can reduce the size of its ever-expanding environmental footprint. Developed as a concept during the 1970s, popularized during the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, and for years the most widely bandied piece of eco-jargon in the field of corporate social responsibility, sustainability is all about preserving the world’s natural resources and environment for future generations. Since China won the bid to hold the 2008 Olympics, a heightened interest in learning about sustainability in Chinese circles abounds, not least because Beijing has vowed to make these Olympics the most technologically advanced and environmentally sustainable ever. 

In China’s current five-year programme (2006–2010), the Chinese Government has turned away from growth-driven policies only and toward sustainable development, demonstrating the desire of the country’s leaders to address the country’s environmental problems. One of the key objectives of the plan, one shared by the Beijing Municipal Government, is to reduce the amount of energy required to produce a unit of GDP by 20 percent, and total discharges of carbon dioxide by 10 percent. As the country urgently needs to erect 100 million more homes, and huge numbers of office blocks are in the urban pipeline, it’s obvious that new construction will have to go green in a big way if these ambitious targets are to be realized. With approximately 2 billion square metres (sq.m) of new Chinese floor space added last year alone, the challenge is daunting.

The concept of sustainable building has evolved over many years. The initial focus was on how to deal with the issue of limited resources, especially energy, and on how to reduce ecological effects. Emphasis was placed on technical issues such as materials, building components, construction technologies and energy-related design concepts. Recently, an appreciation of the significance of non-technical issues has grown. It is now recognized that economic and social sustainability are important, as are the cultural heritage aspects of the built environment.

Green building in China, as in other countries, is still in its infancy, and faces many obstacles. To most real estate developers caught in the construction gold rush, the game is about erecting second-rate buildings as quickly and profitably as possible. Although China has 11 “eco-city” projects under construction and 140 building projects, few foreign experts feel these projects would pass a genuine international green test—involving low energy use, low cost, recycling water systems or “intelligent” integrated design and materials.

Nevertheless, the trend toward sustainable buildings in China is clear and irreversible. In November 2005, the US Green Building Council (USGBC), an American NGO (non-governmental organization), presented awards to ten Chinese real estate developers and government leaders for their “pioneering work in transforming the world’s largest building industry.” The developers, representing some of China’s largest construction companies, had one thing in common: they were the first private sector companies to pursue the USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.

The LEED Green Building Rating System is the internationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high-performance green buildings. It promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality. In 2003, the Century Prosper Center, a 150,000 sq.m (1.6 million-square-foot) twin office tower in Beijing’s CBD, was the first large commercial project in China to be registered for LEED. Another milestone was reached in 2005 when the Coastal Greenland Group took the decision to seek LEED for Neighbourhood Development (LEED ND) registration for a large mixed-use development, also in Beijing.

There are plenty of people on hand to give China advice and financial help in the sustainability arena. Beginning in 2002, and supported by the US Department of Energy, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), another American NGO, began working with the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) on constructing the Agenda 21 Energy-Efficient Office Building in Beijing. This “living building,” which uses 70 percent less energy than similar governmental buildings and which saves 10,000 tons of water a year through rainwater collection, is now finished, and was actually the first building in China to receive an LEED gold rating, earlier this year.

Nick Thompson, an architect from the UK firm Cole Thompson Anders and founder of the environmental design company INTEGER Intelligent & Green, has worked to bring green architecture to China. Thompson said, “The Chinese are extremely capable of delivering solutions to all the problems associated with developing sustainable construction. However, overseas expertise is valuable right now, and probably will be for the next five years, for sharing ideas, processes and technologies to deliver sustainability. We need to learn from each other. The biggest problem of all is to persuade people that it is worthwhile changing to a more sustainable architecture, and a more sustainable lifestyle. This is true in the United Kingdom and in Asia.” 

George Bialecki, founder of Alternative Energy Builders (AEB), another American NGO, and developer of the comprehensive Home Biology 101 sustainable housing system, feels energy efficiency is the area where green homes and offices can bring the biggest benefits in China. He said, “Now there is a debate over which causes more pollution, a home or a car. Even applying conservative estimates and using a ratio of 1:1, we can see that if China’s next 100 million homes are green, with drastically reduced energy requirements, then we are preventing a pollution increase equivalent to that caused by 100 million new cars. This, in itself, would be an incredible achievement.” As part of a project authorized by China’s Ministry of Construction in 2003, the AEB is currently involved in construction of Future House USA, a showcase sustainable house being built on a site outside Beijing, along with eco-houses from seven other countries.

It’s too early to say whether sustainable construction in China will help the Chinese Government meet its laudable environmental goals, or even how much business that will ultimately mean for western companies. Ya Xia, marketing director of the Century Prosper Center, said, “Although constructing and operating green buildings makes financial as well as environmental sense, there just isn’t the awareness of sustainable issues at the grass roots level. Not yet, anyway.” Changing ingrained behaviours is always slow, and China doesn’t have a green-supply chain of parts or materials or the expertise required. Still, despite many problems, it is hoped that Chinese developers will gradually come to appreciate that sustainable construction is a true win-win proposition and that making money and saving the planet doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.