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| Downtown Shanghai has added scores of skyscrapers during the past two decades. Buildings now account for more than a third of China’s energy consumption, experts say, so Shanghai and other megacities are tightening energy codes and beginning to embrace voluntary “green” design standards. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia. |
The fifth in a series of stories on China.
SHANGHAI -- A fifth of the world's construction cranes were at work here in the mid-1990s, pushing this city's skyline up from the banks of the Huangpu River.
High-rises went up fast, but were generally not made to last. Steel was comparatively cheap and electricity consumption was an afterthought.
"There was more concrete poured in Shanghai than all of Western Europe combined," said Rob Moult, Johnson Controls Inc.'s vice president for building efficiency in Asia. "When you're in that kind of market, who the hell cares about retrofitting a building?"
Shanghai and other big Chinese cities are still rising by the block, but construction practices are shifting in the country's emerging market economy. Developers are starting to embrace "green" design standards to meet tougher building codes as well as give their projects an edge in the crowded marketplace.
The confluence of forces has also created a $600 billion Chinese market for reducing energy consumption in existing buildings, estimated Ruiying Zhang, a Beijing-based analyst with the Energy Foundation, a grant-making organization. Fewer than 7 percent of China's buildings meet regional and local codes, which have been ramped up significantly in the past few years, she said.
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| The Merchandise Mart, which looms like a fortress over the Chicago River, is one of the world's first buildings commissioned for an energy retrofit by the Clinton Climate Initiative. The Chicago landmark, built in the Art Deco style, was completed in 1931. Photo by Michael Burnham. |
Climate change could be the next catalyst. Seeing an opportunity to shrink China's massive carbon footprint, a coalition of global energy service companies, banks and nongovernmental organizations coordinated by former President Bill Clinton is preparing to expand a first-of-its-kind building energy retrofit program to China.
The Clinton Climate Initiative's $6 billion program -- aimed at replacing everything from inefficient windows and insulation to heating and cooling equipment -- more than doubles the size of the global retrofit market.
The cash could not come a moment sooner, program participants say.
"Scientific knowledge tells us that the next 10 years are crucial in terms of mitigating climate change, but can China do it fast enough?" asked Peggy Liu, chairwoman of the Joint U.S.-China Cooperation on Clean Energy (JUCCCE), a Shanghai-based nonprofit that is using a Clinton Foundation grant to distribute 10 million compact fluorescent lamps in Chinese buildings.
"The answer is no," Liu said, "unless there's international cooperation now to multiply the impact of financial resources and expertise."
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in a report last year that the world must reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases 50-85 percent during the next few decades to keep mean temperatures from rising more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit and avert dramatic changes in sea level rise and coastland loss.
Asia's "megadeltas" are among places at the greatest risk of rising seas and flooding rivers, the U.N. panel explained. The water could rise anywhere from 2 to 5 feet in Shanghai's Yangtze River Delta by 2050, according to China's State Oceanic Administration.
The projections come as the Red Dragon consumes increasing amounts of coal, concrete and steel to sustain its urbanization.
China surpassed the United States as the world's top greenhouse-gas emitter in 2006 and increased its national emissions 8 percent last year (Greenwire, June 16). Rather than enforce a long-term, binding cap on its emissions, China is tackling climate change through a combination of government policies and market-based initiatives.
China Vice Premier Wang Qishan and U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson signed a 10-year pact last month to work jointly on air, water, transportation, forest conservation and energy issues, including the development of a sulfur dioxide emissions trading program for China's power-generation sector (Greenwire, June 19).
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| The Bund marks the financial hub of Shanghai. As the eastern China megacity grows wealthier, this stretch of the Huangpu River is growing upward with glass and steel towers. China, the world’s largest construction market, adds roughly 2 billion square meters of floor space annually. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia. |
China's five-year plan calls for increasing domestic forest cover to 20 percent and decreasing energy consumption 20 percent per unit of gross domestic product by 2010. Hitting the energy conservation target would reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases 10 percent from China's 2005 emissions level, government officials claim.
"Energy security and greater utilization of energy have to be our major goals," Zhang Xiaoqiang, vice chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission, told a recent Washington gathering of international policymakers.
China is seeking the bulk of its energy and emissions savings from its massive industrial sector, but shrinking the building sector's carbon footprint will be no small task.
Buildings, including construction and operations, account for about 37 percent of total energy consumption and about 52 percent of energy-related CO2 emissions in China, according to an analysis by the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Investment in new infrastructure is booming as a result of China's entry into the World Trade Organization and Beijing's successful bid for the Olympics. The Ministry of Construction projects that China's 40-billion-square-meter portfolio of residential and commercial buildings will double in size by 2020.
The Clinton Climate Initiative's building-retrofit program, launched in May 2007, targeted 16 initial cities: Bangkok, Berlin, Chicago, Houston, Johannesburg, Karachi, London, Melbourne, Mexico City, Mumbai, New York, Rome, São Paulo, Seoul, Tokyo and Toronto.
Johnson Controls and nine other energy service companies are tasked with performing building energy audits and retrofits to make the cities' structures 20-50 percent more efficient. The building owners, whether cities or companies, may pay for the retrofits with private financing or tap into the $6 billion funding pool, a CCI spokesperson said.
Among the first buildings receiving a CCI face-lift is Chicago's mammoth Merchandise Mart -- the world's third-largest building, after the Pentagon and Beijing Capital International Airport's new Terminal 3. Merchandise Mart officials estimate that it will cost about $50 million over five years to retrofit the building.
"There's a quick return on investment with an energy retrofit, so it's a no-brainer," said Lloyd Davidson, Merchandise Mart Properties Inc.'s vice president for construction services. "We want to prove that if you can be greener in a 4.2-million-square-foot building built in 1931, you can do it anywhere."
Davidson said he's hoping for a return on investment in three to seven years, but Johnson Controls' Moult said most private building owners in Asia's booming construction market expect to recoup retrofit expenses within three to five years.
"They're not interested in a long payback time because there's so much low-hanging fruit out there," Moult contended.
Johnson Controls has completed CCI retrofits on three buildings, in Bangkok and Mumbai, and has another 50 buildings in Asia slated for work during the next few years, Moult noted. Several of the buildings are in Beijing and Shanghai.
"There's a lot of opportunity out there," Moult said, scanning Shanghai's skyline from atop a downtown hotel.
Not everyone sees retrofits as the way forward for China, which is adding roughly 2 billion square meters of floor space annually.
The world's biggest construction market should put its capital and technical resources toward making new buildings more energy efficient, suggested Deborah Seligsohn, director of the World Resources Institute's China program.
"Most of the stuff built in the '80s is getting torn down, and I expect most of the rest to get torn down during the next 20 years," Seligsohn said. "If you don't have the right policies in place today, you're going to be putting in a new set of buildings in 20 years."
Central planners are keenly aware of this, she surmised, especially as international pressure mounts on China to curb emissions from the scores of cement and steel factories feeding its urbanization.
In the past few years, China has revamped its regional energy codes to require new buildings to be at least 50 percent more efficient than those built in the '80s and '90s.
"Code compliance is still an issue, but it's getting better," conceded Energy Foundation analyst Zhang, who has worked with cities to develop more robust efficiency standards.
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| The China World Trade Center Tower III, which will be Beijing’s tallest building, at 1,083 feet, is one of more than 60 buildings in China that are registered for certification by the U.S. Green Building Council. The trade center tower was designed by the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP. Photo by Michael Burnham. |
Many developers are reluctant to make higher capital investments in state-of-the-art heating, ventilation and cooling equipment if tenants are the ones who will reap the energy savings, she explained.
"We need to develop regulations and monitoring systems to ensure code compliance during the construction process," Zhang suggested.
China's central government, which issues the regional building codes, has attempted to spur sustainable development at the local level, with mixed success.
The Ministry of Construction offers subsidies for demonstration projects that utilize passive heating and cooling technologies, as well as renewable energy. The ministry also promulgates a baseline standard for green building that covers energy, water, indoor air quality, materials use and operation and maintenance.
The government's voluntary, three-star rating standard, however, is far less rigorous than the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) system, Zhang and others contend.
"Builders in China are more eager to use LEED," said Jin Ruidong, a Beijing-based building efficiency specialist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "It's more scientific and easier to use."
Even so, building green is still largely a niche trend among China's urban developers, Jin and his colleagues emphasized. The U.S. Green Building Council has vetted 11 buildings in China; about 60 more are registered for LEED certification, according to the organization's online database.
"There's a glut of buildings in China, so developers have begun using design standards as a marketing tool," said Barbara Finamore, NRDC's China program director. "They're seeking a competitive advantage, just like builders do in the United States."
David Nieh, an executive with the Shanghai-based builder Shui On Development Ltd., said he expects the stronger energy codes -- and eventually stronger consumer demand -- will make China's future buildings more environmentally sustainable.
The challenge today, he said, is educating building occupants that "green" means more than just planting trees and shrubs at the front entrance: It means creating access to public transit and designs that save energy and encourage walking.
"[The market] is coming on, but it's very nascent," Nieh said. "Most Chinese consumers don't know exactly what 'green' means yet."
