Measures to enforce mandatory civil building energy efficiency codes in China

Abstract

Mandatory civil building energy efficiency codes strictly govern the energy consumption of new buildings in China. As the promotion of building energy efficiency in China has increased in recent years, compliance with mandatory civil building energy efficiency codes has also improved, increasing from less than 10% in 2000 to nearly 100% in 2012, a remarkable achievement. However, because the promotion of energy efficiency strategies in China has followed a unique pattern, some researchers doubt these statistics. In response to these doubts, this paper summarises and analyses the framework of measures implemented by the Chinese government to enforce mandatory building energy efficiency codes. First, the development and implementation of China's mandatory civil building energy efficiency code system is summarised. Second, the building supervision and inspection systems used to assess energy efficiency are introduced and analysed in detail in order to provide a framework for the development of energy policies in other countries. Third, the assessment and reporting processes used to determine compliance rates are reviewed. Finally, the improvement of compliance rates and its impact on building energy savings in China are discussed. Along with the increase in compliance rates in the construction stage from 71% in 2007 to 100% in 2012, the energy savings of new buildings per increased floor area per year increased from 20.4 kWh/m 2 to 28.4 kWh/m 2. The supervision and inspection systems reported in this paper are the keys to enforcing building energy efficiency codes.

Improving the Green Building Evaluation System in China Based on the DANP Method

“…Several academics [6,[24][25][26] have proposed some suggestions regarding the development of a Chinese green building evaluation system and standards, but we found no research aimed at finding the relationship between the factors of the green building rating systems. Ye et al [6] suggested an evaluation system for green building practices by proposing a three layer basis for general and specialized standards.…”

Major Barriers to the New Residential Building Energy-Efficiency Promotion in China: Frontlines’ Perceptions

“…As indicated in Table 1, some government departments' incapability of cooperating with others leads to this barrier and increases the complexity in administration and the difficulty for market stakeholders to access the incentives. In addition, despite the fact that Chinese central government has spared little effort in eliminating the non-compliance of standard via annual inspection [10], challenges still exist in small cities, towns and villages [69], as introduced in Section 1. As the implementation of current building energy efficiency incentives is solely through a problematic top-down target responsibility system [70], researchers have suggested that, under the current governance mode, policy bundling, interest bundling and policy framing could facilitate effective implementation by local governments rather than the central one [71].…”

“…Other than their existences in one single stage in the life cycle of a building, problems have covered all the phases of the construction process. According to the result of annual inspection dominated by the MoHURD in China, the unsatisfied construction quality and the neglect of surveyor's duty were the major two problems, accounting for approximately 40% of the projects found to be problematic [10].…”

“…Governments in current China own the strongest discourse power and with abundant policy resources, they can regulate market stakeholders' activities by a variety range of policy instruments in current policy system [16]. For example, current national policy settings in China has introduced mandatory energy performance standard and market access mechanism so that residential buildings can be designed and constructed according to a specific energy-efficiency level, and those housings of a lower energy-efficiency level are not permitted to be traded [10]. Most provincial and municipal governments have also introduced the market access system for building insulation materials to assure their quality and the corresponding performance [5].…”

“…This was also to avoid pre-assuming which particular policy is perceived significant by stakeholders. The span of policy system not only covered the policies directly related to the energy performance of a building such as References [10,16,17], but also extended its focus on the policies affecting the popularization of high-performance new residential buildings and the massive adoption of technologies, materials and equipment of higher energy efficiency in the life cycle of a building such as Reference [5]. Both types of policies were equally considered in regard to forming a better policy design whilst the latter type of policies were taken into consideration when analyzing the barriers to the better implementation outcome of the former type of policies.…”