Currently the three biggest energy consumers in China revolve
around construction, industry and transportation. With construction
in China booming and an increased demand for comfort in residences,
energy consumption for construction purposes has risen accordingly,
reported China Economic Weekly on October 29.
According to Wang Tiehong, chief-engineer of the Ministry of
Construction, energy consumption for construction purposes accounts
for 30 percent of society's total energy consumption. The energy is
mainly consumed by heating and air-conditioning and reaches about
20 percent.
The above-stated "30 percent" only refers to the energy consumed
in constructing and utilizing these buildings. This, plus the
energy consumed in producing building materials and other related
construction costs, accounts for 46.7 percent of the entire social
energy.
"Each year we'll have another 2-billion-square-meter new
buildings and 99 percent of them are high energy consumption
structures. With regard to the existing 43-billion-square-meter
buildings, only 4 percent of them have adopted energy saving
measures. Therefore the energy consumed by heating per unit area is
more than 3 times that consumed by new buildings in developed
countries. If no effective measures are taken China's building
energy consumption will be treble the present standard by
2020.
Building energy efficient edifices has aroused the attention of
related institutions. Early in 1986 China first tried building
energy efficient structures using design standards on a trial
basis. And in 1999 this building energy efficient design standard
was mandated in northern China. The General Office of the State
Council and the Ministry of Construction put forward a series of
documents to promote energy conservation in construction over the
last few years. Local governments have also adopted practical
measures to reduce building structures that consume undue
energy.
However, because of a lack of effective administrative
supervision, the implementation of building to enhance energy
saving measures has not run smoothly.
But the above facts do indicate that China's energy saving
technology regarding edifices still has great market potential.
Chou Baoxing, vice minister of Construction, said that using highly
efficient energy technology to transform existing buildings may
save about 600 billion yuan (US $80.5 billion) each year, which
means China could reduce the amount of output needed from the 4
Three Gorges Power Stations.
Currently China is facing environmental deterioration and limited
resources. During the process of industrialization and
urbanization, if the country wants to maintain a growth rate of
over 7 percent per year and achieve sustainable development in the
next 15 years, it is crucial to promote energy saving buildings and
reduce building energy consumption now.
Top three energy consumers in construction
Heating
This March China's Annual Report on the Development and Research
of China's Building Energy Conservation (2007) issued by the
Building Energy Research Center of Tsinghua University claimed that
north urban heating consumes 40 percent of the total energy
consumed by urban buildings, thus constituting the largest part of
building energy consumption. The Ministry of Construction
statistics (2006) showed that heating for the whole nation consumed
0.13 billion tons of coal that year, or 10 percent of the total
social energy consumption.
"When winter comes, I feel rather annoyed: central heating supplies
too much heat. It makes my home very hot and dry. It wastes energy
and makes people uncomfortable," Mr. Han, a Beijing resident, told
the reporter from China Economic Weekly.
Mr. Han urged the property enterprises to turn down the temperature
a little bit. The answer he got was "No".
Chou Baoxing, vice minister of the Construction, said in an
interview that the current heating system design is not reasonable;
users cannot adjust their house temperatures. When they feel too
warm, they have to open the windows to compensate. This wastes
about 7 percent of the total heat. "The energy consumption per unit
area in our country is 1-1.5 times that of northern Europe
countries at the same latitude," said Jiang Yi, an academician of
the Chinese academy of Engineering and professor from Tsinghua
University.
Large public buildings
"Large public building areas take up only 4 percent of the total
building area. But public buildings consume 22 percent of the total
energy consumed by structures," said Wu Yong, vice director of the
Science and Technology Department of the Ministry of Construction.
The newly issued Annual Report on the Development and Research of
China's Building Energy Conservation (2007) claimed that the
electricity consumption per area in large public buildings is
70~300KWH/(square meters per year), which is about 5-15 times
greater than the energy consumed by resident buildings. Actually,
large public buildings are considered to be highly concentrated
energy consumption areas.
Taking Beijing as an example: In Beijing public structures take up
5.4 percent of all structures, yet they consume nearly half of the
total electricity allocated for the municipal residents on a yearly
basis.
On June 27, the State Council issued the Resident Building
Energy Conservation Regulations (draft), stipulating that in summer
the temperature in air-conditioned public buildings shall not be
lower than 26℃. The reporter from China Economic Weekly visited a
dozen office buildings this August and found that the temperature
for almost all public buildings was lower than 26℃. The staff wore
jackets and sweaters while the air conditioners
hummed.
Academician Jiang Yi described large public building energy
consumption as a "black hole". Ordinary Beijing household air
conditioning consumes 2 kwhs of electricity per square meter on
average. However, air conditioning in a large public building
consumes 60~70 kwhs of electricity per square meter. Usually the
household air conditioning operates about 400 hours during half a
year; large public building air conditioning runs 1,800 hours
during the same period of time.
Why have large public buildings become huge energy
consumers?
First and foremost, their design doesn't promote energy
conservation. According to some inside experts, many large public
buildings have huge glass screen walls: glass doesn't shelter from
the sun and insulate heat. Glass causes great energy losses. "These
buildings are high energy consuming construction wastelands,"
exclaimed Huang Ming, the president of Huangming Group. For him,
the percentage of energy consumed by windows and the walls is 6 ：1.
Large public buildings are extremely hot inside in the summer and
extremely cold in the winter due the great expanse of glass walls.
Due to this glass many skyscrapers must turn on their
air-conditioners to adjust the indoor temperature. "Their energy
consumption is shockingly high."
Apart from the design, Lin Haiyan, a researcher from China Academy
of Building Research, believes that the users of resident buildings
have strong energy conservation awareness. Large public buildings
are for public use, so nobody cares about whether they are energy
conserving or not. No one is responsible for this huge energy
consumption.
Academician Jiang Yi believes that in order to reduce energy
consumption in large public buildings, China needs to establish an
energy conserving examination system for new buildings and also an
energy consumption quota management mechanism.
This January five ministries including the Ministry of
Construction jointly issued Certain Opinions on Strengthening
Large-scale Public Building Engineering Construction Management.
The document criticized the following conduct: neglecting resource
and energy conservation; occupying too much land; putting excessive
emphasis on the appearance of buildings and neglecting their
functions in use.
Lai Ming, the director of the Science and Technology Department
of the Ministry of Construction disclosed that the Ministry of
Construction would do a statistical analysis of energy consumption
in state administrative office buildings and large public buildings
in 32 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions including
Beijing and Shanghai. It will publish the energy consumption
conditions of some state administrative office buildings and other
large public buildings. Based on these statistics and conditions,
the Ministry of Construction will set down a series of rules to
reduce the energy consumption: energy use standards, energy
consumption quotas and penalties for energy consumption in excess
of the energy consumption quota and energy saving
services.
Solid bricks
Solid bricks are traditional wall materials. Data from the
National Reform and Development Commission indicated that wall
materials account for 70 percent of all building materials. Solid
bricks are primary wall materials. Solid brick production consumes
1 billion cubic meters of clay. This is equivalent to ruining
500,000 mu (33,350 hectares) of potential farmland. Statistics show
that each year China consumes 70 million tons of standard coal to
produce solid bricks.
Since 2000 the state has forbidden the use of solid clay bricks
because of its huge energy consumption as well as its damage to the
land. This year the State Council issued the Notice about Further
Advancing the Wall Material Innovation and Promoting Energy
Conservation Construction. The paper mandates that by the end of
2010, all cities must cease using solid clay bricks. Also, the
annual output of solid clay bricks shall be limited to 400 billion
bricks or under.
"The state has published a list of cities prohibiting solid
bricks. Many big cities like Beijing and Shanghai no longer uses
solid bricks, but there are still large amounts of solid bricks in
rural localities," remarked an insider.
Since solid clay bricks consume so much energy and the state has
put forward a series of bans, why haven't environmentally friendly
sand lime bricks or concrete hollow bricks replaced solid
bricks?
"People don't like sand lime bricks: their water absorbing
capacity is not good; their compressive resistance is not ideal.
People don't even use them to build bungalows. They only use them
to build pigsties or toilets," a brick factory director
explained.
But one salesman held a contrary opinion. He told the reporter
that the production cycle of concrete hollow bricks is rather long,
nearly a month. Additionally, this production is very complicated
and generates relatively high costs. Currently each concrete hollow
brick costs about 0.44 yuan (US$0.06), which is more expensive than
a solid clay brick. "People buy solid bricks because they are
cheap."
An official from the National Development and Reform Commission
stated that China would enhance the support for the promotion of
new wall materials. Administrative office buildings with the
financial allocations or subsidies, public buildings, economically
affordable housing, model building communities and the productive
projects invested by the state all must use new wall materials.
China will provide necessary funding to support major technological
development and industrial modeling projects for new wall
materials.
20 years of building energy saving practice has achieved
little effect
"Why aren't energy conserving buildings smoothly incorporated
into China's real estate market? Why do they encounter so much
resistance? These issues demand our attention," an industry insider
said.
Tu Fengxiang, the director of the Building Energy Efficiency
Committee of the China Construction Industry Association,
previously expressed deep worries because buildings that promote
energy conservation has developed slowly and encountered many
difficulties along the way. More and more high-energy consumption
buildings are cropping up while the gap between China and the
developed countries becomes wider and
wider.
This is a fact. Faced with such huge building energy consumption,
energy saving standards for construction are not likely to
transition smoothly. Here is an obvious example: in 2005 the
Ministry of Construction conducted a survey of energy saving
conditions for construction in 17 provinces. It turned out that
only 50 percent of the energy saving design projects in northern
areas operated according to actual design standards. Chou Baoxing,
the vice minister of Construction, concluded the cause is due to
the lack of an effective administrative supervision
system.
As is mentioned above, China's energy saving construction work
started in the 1980s. A series of standards and laws were enacted
to deal with this problem but: "So far no project has been punished
for not meeting the energy saving standard," Zhang Qingfeng, vice
director of the Center of Science and Technology of Construction,
Ministry of Construction, disclosed in an
interview.
The Regulation of Civil Building Energy Saving issued in October
2005 stipulates, "Construction units failing to meet the compulsory
building energy saving standards shall be fined 200,000-500,000
yuan (US$26,673-66,682)." The regulation clearly specifies punitive
measures but their implementation is still faulty. "For these are
only macro policies. It is still very difficult to micro-manage
them and also to effectively supervise real estate developers,"
explained Wu Yong, the vice director of the Science and Technology
Department of the Ministry of Construction.
In addition to almost zero supervision, a lack of incentives has
also hampered the promotion of building energy conservation.
"A huge hindrance is that the price of energy is still
relatively low. Users and developers of buildings gain few benefits
from energy saving technology projects. Therefore they are not very
enthusiastic about these projects," an insider commented.
He further stated that now there exists an unfavorable tendency:
people tend to mystify energy saving technologies. So they dare not
to learn about such technologies and they believe that saving
energy will greatly increase costs. With house prices rising fast,
investment or non-investment in energy saving constitutes are in a
big contradiction. Without any investment in energy saving, houses
sell at very pleasant prices. Such factors hamper an all-round
promotion of energy saving projects.
"Without incentives developers are very unlikely to construct
energy saving buildings willingly. We do not lack laws and
regulations and technology is not a problem. The key problem is
that we have no incentive policies. For example, buildings that
conserve energy are not mentioned in bank loan regulations," Zhang
Zaidong, chairman of the Fengshang Real Estate, told the
reporter.
Wu Yong said: "Because economic incentive policies directed at
erecting energy conserving buildings is lacking, the market
mechanism to promote building structures to save energy has not yet
materialized. It is difficult to regulate and control the behaviors
of different interest groups. Consequently the real estate
development markets are not adequately responsive to the current
changes in the energy saving index for construction
purposes."
For real estate developers, building costs seems to be a
hindrance toward constructing energy efficient buildings. But at
the 2007 Sino-Europe Building Energy Saving Summit Forum and
Sino-Europe Energy Saving Building Project Contact Meeting, experts
pointed out that the energy saved from the long-term use of energy
saving green buildings have values far higher than their initial
expenses. A developer claimed that a Chinese energy efficient
building only consumes 30 percent of the energy consumed by an
ordinary building and that it could save 10,000 tons of water each
year. Energy experts asserted that expenses saved from the 70-year
life span of an energy saving building could erect a similar
building at no cost.
(China.org.cn by Zhang Ming'ai, November 7, 2007)
