Green building makes up a small proportion of China’s construction industry, but government targets may give sustainable building a boost over the next five years.
Green Building is on the rise in China as benefits of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system is beginning to be realized. Currently large Multinational and Chinese companies are leading the way in green building as they have been pushing a “sustainability vision” for years. The companies initially sought green building as a good way to market their businesses, but now more corporations are investing in sustainable constructions because of lower operation costs, premium on rents, stronger tenant occupancy rates, and higher return on investment.
According to the PRC National Bureau of Statistics, China began constructing 1.9 billion square meters of floor space and invested more than ¥6.2 trillion ($983 billion) in property development in 2011. Moreover, China’s recent Five-Year Plan aims to reduce 16 percent of energy usage per unit of GDP and reduce CO2 levels by 17 percent per unit of GDP. China has realized that buildings account for roughly 25 percent of all their energy consumption, so regulators have began to focus on implementing green and energy efficient practices in both new and established buildings. Beijing alone plans to build 35 million square meters of green buildings by 2015, according to the People’s Daily. This all points to larger investments in the green sector and China’s growing need for implementation.
Whether green building will play a large role in meeting these goals remains to be seen, but advocates remain optimistic that the green building market will continue to grow in China. Still, some think the PRC government will have to implement stronger policies before mainstream developers build green projects on a larger scale. Experts say construction decisions are often made based on short-term costs, such as material and labor costs, instead of considering the long-term savings from energy efficiency or green building techniques. Alessandro Bisagni, founder and managing director of BEE, Inc., a sustainable building consulting firm that works on projects in China and the United States, says working on green building projects in the United States and China is like night and day because Chinese builders still prefer to cut costs in the short term. “The extent of solutions that you can propose in a project [in China] is limited in a way because of that payback and cost mentality,” he says. “In China, there’s still a large knowledge gap. In order to cross that it takes a lot of effort.”
That effort is starting to pay off as more and more companies are starting to adopt LEED certification ideals. The number of China’s LEED registered and certified buildings are on the rise and many believe China will soon focus its efforts in becoming the world’s leader in green building as the government begins to push for sustainable building practices in the wake of creating a better and more efficient economy.
