Green building in China

Abstract

Green buildings can play a role in helping countries meet their commitments under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Green building can provide an important contribution to sustainability, for example, by improving energy efficiency, by improving indoor air quality, and by effective waste treatment. In practice, we see that there is an increasing interest in various forms of green building. However, the existing literature has not identified the role of law in promoting green building. It is, moreover, striking that green building has taken off in a rather impressive manner in China. Although generally there are still huge environmental problems with which China is confronted, for many years already China has been engaged in green building. This paper wants to examine what explains the relative success of green building in China; What specific legal instruments can be used to promote green building; and what lessons can be drawn more generally from experience in China? The paper uses the theory of smart regulation (Gunningham/Grabosky) and the economic analysis of law to examine the importance of different instruments in promoting green building. The paper comes to two key results, being that no single instrument in itself is optimal to promote green building as a result of which a smart mix needs to be designed to promote green building; moreover, for the specific case of China, it is the large government involvement in the economy that has been able to jump-start green building. The Chinese government has, on the one hand, mandated green building in government projects, but on the other hand, also used market-based instruments (like subsidies and public procurement) to promote green building.

A Systematic Review of Green Building Development in China: Advantages, Challenges and Future Directions

“…From the perspective of water and energy, it is necessary for the green buildings in China to adopt wastewater purification technologies to increase water recycling, instead of merely minimizing their water consumption [9,89,90]. Further, from the viewpoint of environmental benignity, it is essential for the green buildings to be suitably integrated into the local ecology and environment, and the green buildings and the environment are required to have reciprocal benefits in their lifecycle [9,[89][90][91].…”

“…In addition to the ESGB, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) are also adopted as green building evaluation standards [124][125][126][127]. By 2021, there were approximately 24,700 green building projects awarded ESGB certification, 2600 projects (over 95.8 million square meters of certificated area) awarded LEED certification, and approximately 120 projects (approximately 11.6 million square meters of certificated area) audited for BREEAM certification in China [91,128]. From 2000 to 2016, LEED-certified green buildings cumulatively reduced energy consumption in China by 69.3 million USD (52.3 million USD in electricity consumption and 8.29 million USD in natural gas utilization [129]).…”

Arsitektur hijau mendukung adaptasi perilaku di masa pandemi Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) di Alun-Alun Kota Batam

“…Bangunan hijau dapat digunakan untuk meminimalisir pengunaan energi, menghemat lebih banyak air, serta menggunakan bahan yang sehat atau ramah terhadap manusia (Pradono, 2008). Desain bangunan hijau meliputi tata letak, konstruksi, pengoperasian dan pemeliharaan bangunan (Shen & Faure, 2020). Vale (2017) mengungkapkan bahwa prinsip bangunan hijau dalam "Mencapai Masa Depan yang Berkelanjutan dalam Desain Bangunan Hijau" ada beberapa macam diantaranya Hemat energy yang mana di dalam bangunan hijau, penggunaan energi secara rasional bisa disebut sebagai hal yang utama.…”

Climate Change Mitigation: Policies and Lessons for Asia

“…For example, a mandatory energy disclosure program contributed to the reduction in energy usage and carbon emissions from the affected building stocks in Australia (Kim and Lim 2018). Studies on developing Asia include evaluations of the effectiveness of green building policies in the PRC Shen and Faure 2021), the determinants of green building adaptation in the PRC (Wang et al 2018), and barriers to green building development in Malaysia (Samari et al 2013).…”