Western China makes steps to sustainable building

Chongqing Taoyuanju Community Center by Vector Architects

China is increasing its efforts to make its buildings more sustainable with a new four-year program that kicked off following a two-day conference earlier this month in Chongqing.

The conference brought together more than 250 participants from national and local governments, Chinese enterprises and associations from all provinces in Western China as well as related German organisations.

Building energy consumption in China has increased by 40 per cent since 1990 and accounts for about 30 per cent of total final energy consumption. Although in recent years there has been a significant growth in green buildings in China, the development is still at an early stage in western China.

In this part of the world, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) play a vital role in building sector but their staff often lack knowledge and skills in the field of sustainable building and have a limited access to financing.

The SusBuild project aims to foster sustainable building practices among these small companies in Chongqing City and Yunnan province. It is funded by a European Union project called Switch Asia II. This is concerned with capacity building, providing technical support and raising awareness of large-scale commercial buildings, strengthening the capacity of financial institutions for providing green loans to these kind of companies, and promoting the idea of a sustainable building sector to decision-makers at national and local levels.

For Europe there is the added benefit of fostering a business network locally and between the EU and China.

The conference addressed three topics: sustainable building materials and components, sustainable building design and construction, and energy management in buildings.

Lena Tholen and Christopher Moore from the influential German Wuppertal Institut, which initiated the project, shared European experiences of energy management in sustainable buildings, giving a policy perspective, and the design and construction of sustainable buildings.

Participants visited pilot project buildings and an industry park aiming at developing modern building industry clusters in Chongqin Quijiang District.

Amongst the buildings that the delegates saw were the green roofs of the Chongqing Taoyuanju Community Center, designed by Beijing-based Vector Architects. This is blanketed with plants, from vine-covered walls to the undulating green roof that mimics the shape of the surrounding hillside. The design includes a rainwater collection and reuse system, passive ventilation, permeable pavement, and locally sourced materials.

Chongqing Taoyuanju Community Center by Vector Architects

One building in the complex has earned LEED Gold certification. Xizi Otis Chongqing Plant won the award for its sustainable construction, reduced water use, energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality, among other measures. It also recycled 90 per cent of the waste generated during its construction phase, which used locally sourced materials to reduce its carbon footprint. It utilises an ongoing operations management process to minimise environmental impact.

The factory manufactures an elevator design that is a favourite of green buildings. The Gen2 elevator reduces energy consumption by up to 75 per cent compared with traditional elevators by using a regenerative drive, LED lighting and sleep mode for elevator lights and fans.

Also in the area is a regeneration project for a 22-hectare former iron and steelworks dating back to the 1930s in the Dadukou district that is designed to make it economically, socially and environmentally sustainable. The former gasometer is now a business hotel for an area that has a mixed economy with compact planning to ensure good connectivity; and sustainable forms of transport – buses, trams and pedestrian route.

'Magic Mountains'.

In this district the authorities recently held a contest to design a new green business district. One entry, from the CEBO/Chongqing University team, was for a development populated with buildings that resemble prismatic mountain peaks called Magic Mountains.

The tops of the buildings have plants growing out of them and the design includes passive cooling and heating, a plan that encourages biking and walking, and measures to reduce the overall consumption of resources and energy by 22 per cent.

The university hosts a low carbon green building international joint research centre which this entry was intended to showcase.

SWITCH Asia II will continue until the end of 2019.

Chinese carbon emissions - or ours?

Why should we bother about climate change when China doesn't? Because China uses our hipocrisy - and failure to act - as an excuse for its own inaction.

In this country many people say: "What does it matter what we do about climate change in the UK - our actions are dwarfed by China's emissions!"

After all, China’s annual coal production is set to double to a staggering 5 billion tonnes a year by 2030. It is also planning to move 400 million people from the country into cities over the next 30 years. Over this period it will build approximately half the new buildings in the world, and Chinese buildings are currently only a third as energy efficient as Europe's.

China is therefore key to the success of the current climate talks.

But China argues that its per capita carbon dioxide emission is much less than that of the United States and European countries, (according to Wan Gang, Minister of Science and Technology of China yesterday).

Wan Gang said his country has set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emission by 20 percent per unit of GDP during 2006-2010. But this is clearly not enough. The atmosphere cannot cope with the output of two new coal burning power stations every week for years, which China is currently building.

So is there no point in doing anything here? Yes of course, and here is one reason why: in the press release on the Chinese government's web site, announcing Wan Gang's speech, the first link below the text, under the heading " Correlative Article" is a link to the report I discussed yesterday that UK emissions have "risen by one fifth".

The Chinese government appears to be saying by putting the link here - "Put your own house in order, you developed countries - practice what you so loudly preach - before you tell us that we can't give our people the same quality of life that yours have."

But hold on. A big rise in our emissions is really because we're buying more goods from cheap sources like China.

And the Chinese love this. Here's a glimpse of the future: China is investing $30bn in a 100 square kilometre site to build the Beijing Cyber Recreation Project. Among other things this will house the infrastructure (computer server farms, electricity-generation, online banking links, transport logistics etc.) to host nine or ten virtual worlds, that will be used to direct market Chinese goods to the rest of the world. Think 3-D Amazon and more.

This will enable China - avoiding UK retail outlets and distributors - to recoup 100% of the retail price of its products. The project's chief scientist, Chi Tau Robert Lai, said that the aim was to cut out the middlemen. "A shirt made in China for £1 typically sells for £20 in Europe. We have a big manufacturing capacity." No kidding. Just imagine what that will do to British high streets, not to mention air freight impacts.

Logic therefore implies that even without the climate change imperative, Britain and Europe need to act now to protect themselves from this threat to their retail industry by becoming less reliant on goods from the far east.

Meanwhile, Wan Gang, China IS, in fact, one of the reasons why UK emissions are increasing. Perhaps you should not have posted that link on your press release after all.

And perhaps you should accept the many reasons which delegates at Bali are giving you, as to why it makes sense for China to sign up to ambitious climate-heating gas reduction targets.

A disaster affecting 200 million people doesn't make news

Floods:

• millions of hectares of farmland submerged
• more than 200 million people affected
• over 500 killed
• hundreds of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed
• more flash floods, downpours and landslides expected in the coming days

Not the UK or the US, but China. If it were the US or UK it would be all over the media.

These are the worst floods in ten years in China where every year at least 5000 people die in floods.

Five thousand years ago, soil depletion and flooding due to deforestation led to starvation and disaster in China (source: Clive Ponting's Green History of the World). They are still repeating the same errors.

Some say only a huge disaster will wake us up and force us to do something abut global warming and unsustainable land management. 200 million affected is clearly not a sufficient scale.

I am not confident that those who typically lead human communities are able to make long-term and rational decisions, while the majority of the rest of us quite naturally want to have our cake and eat it, if it's available.