China's Buildings Going Green

With the largest building construction market in the world, China is increasing its efforts to make buildings more sustainable. With around 28 per cent of the nation's energy consumption, improvement in the sustainability of the building sector would have a large impact China's greenhouse gas emissions. Against this background, "SusBuild-Up-Scaling and Mainstreaming Sustainable Building Practices in Western China", a project of the Wuppertal Institute, financed by EU Switch-Asia II programme, aims at fostering sustainable building practices among small and large enterprises in Chongqing City and the province of Yunnan. Project coordinators and partners have now met on the 5th June, within the "SusBuild EU-China Dialogue on Sustainable Building Technologies" in Xi'an, Shaanxi province in Western China.

The two-day conference was hosted by the Wuppertal Institute, the China Association of Building Energy Efficiency and co-hosted by the Shaan Xi Association of Building Energy Efficiency, and the German Energy Agency (dena) and supported by Sino-German Urbanization Partnership. It brought 150 participants from different fields together, including regional and local authorities, building associations, governmental think tanks, Chinese enterprises and associations, private-sector and civil society stakeholders from China as well as related European enterprises and organisations.

The consensus among the experts was that European building strategies and techniques cannot be imported one to one into the Chinese context. In fact, these must be adapted and the appropriate measures taken to ensure that the sustainable technologies be implemented correctly. Furthermore, many speakers pointed out that quality in the construction stage is of utmost importance not only for securing sustainability and energy efficiency but also for saving cost from reworking in the long run. Finally, it was concluded that buildings cannot be considered as islands but must be esteemed in a holistic sense, interacting with the neighbourhood and city around them. Only then, a truly sustainable society can be achieved.