China's green race against urban
surge By Josh Adams
BEIJING - Every year for the next 20
years, up to 10 million people will move from
China’s countryside to urban areas. This
unprecedented migration will place huge demands on
existing cities, and on the environment. On
average, Chinese city dwellers use three times
more energy than their rural counterparts, and by
2020 China will account for 16% of the world’s
total energy consumption. This is a prospect that
is causing serious concern, both inside and
outside China.
If China follows the
historic trends of the West as it develops,
residential and commercial building energy
consumption could soon skyrocket to account for a
third of the nation’s total energy use. If coal,
China’s most abundant fossil fuel, continues to
supply most of the country’s energy needs, and
China’s buildings
continue to multiply and
consume energy as they do now, the resultant
increase in the country’s carbon dioxide emissions
will dwarf any reductions achieved elsewhere.
Many individuals, organizations and the
Chinese government feel that a committed drive
toward sustainability is the only way that China
can reduce the size of its ever-expanding
environmental footprint. For years, the most
widely bandied piece of eco-jargon in the field of
corporate social responsibility, "sustainability",
has been all about preserving the world’s natural
resources and environment for future generations.
Since China won the bid to hold the 2008
Olympics, renewed vigor in learning about
sustainability has abounded in Chinese circles,
not least because Beijing has vowed to make the
August Games the most technologically advanced and
environmentally sustainable to date. In China’s
current Five Year Plan (2006-2010), the government
has tried to turn away from growth-driven policies
toward sustainable development, demonstrating the
desire of the country’s leaders to address the
country’s dire environmental problems.
One
of the key objectives of the plan is to reduce the
amount of energy required to produce a unit gross
domestic product (GDP) by 20%, and China’s total
discharge of carbon dioxide by 10%. As the country
urgently needs to erect 100 million more homes,
and huge numbers of office blocks are in the urban
pipeline, it’s obvious that new construction will
have to go green in a big way if these targets are
going to be realized. With over 2 billion square
meters of new Chinese floorspace added last year
alone, the challenge is daunting.
Sustainable construction in China, as in
many other countries, is still in its infancy and
faces many obstacles. To most real estate
developers caught in the construction gold rush,
the game is about erecting second-rate buildings
as quickly and profitably as possible. Although
China has 11 "eco-city" projects under
construction and 140 building projects, few
foreign experts feel these projects would pass a
genuine international green test - involving low
energy use, low cost, recycling water systems and
"intelligent" integrated design and materials.
One of China’s most vaunted sustainable
building projects is the eco-city of Dongtan,
being built on the Manhattan-sized island of
Chongming in the mouth of the Yangtze River, just
north of Shanghai. According to Arup, the UK firm
that designed Dongtan, and which is also working
on a range of other high-profile China-based
projects, the city’s population will swell from a
few farmers and fishermen today to 80,000 by 2020,
and up to 400,000 by 2050.
The delicate
nature of Dongtan’s virtually pristine ecosystem
has been one of the driving factors behind the
city’s design. Arup plans to enhance the existing
environment by returning agricultural land to its
former wetland state, thereby creating a "buffer
zone" between humans and nature and increasing
biodiversity. By implementing the latest green
building technology, Dongtan’s buildings will run
entirely on renewable energy, and the city is
expected to recover, recycle and reuse 90% of all
its waste.
Opinion is still divided over
whether Dongtan really will be as green as it
claims. Dan Ilett, editor of London-based
Greenbang magazine, comments, "Anyone who claims
to be able to build a sustainable city had better
be sure they know what they’re talking about, and
there are still a lot of questions that need to be
answered. Everyone knows the Chinese government
doesn’t have such a great track record when it
comes to the environment, and it’s entirely
possible Dongtan is just another case of
'greenwashing' on a mammoth scale."
Other
critics claim that local planners are more
concerned with raising Dongtan’s profitability
than ensuring sustainable development, and that
the expensive eco-housing due to be built will
force locals out and bring China’s wealthy elite
in. Peter Head, the Arup director overseeing
Dongtan, counters, "In order to be sustainable
socially and economically, the city will need to
be populated by a wide range of demographics. We
don’t yet know how the residents will be selected
as this is under the jurisdiction of the Shanghai
and Chongming Island Governments. However, 30% of
accommodation in the city will certainly be
affordable housing."
Head continues, "The
sustainable development model developed by the
Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC)
and Arup for Dongtan is directly relevant to
cities, both new and old, around the world. Our
intention is to create a sustainable,
resource-efficient and culturally rich
environment, a blueprint for sustainable urban
development across China." Arup, SIIC, HSBC Bank
and Sustainable Development Capital LLP (SDCL)
have just formed a consortium to develop a funding
model for Chinese eco-cities, and have helped
found the Dongtan Institute for Sustainability at
Shanghai’s Tongji University.
Despite the
latent skepticism over large-scale projects like
Dongtan, the trend toward sustainable buildings in
China is nevertheless gaining momentum. In
November 2005, the US Green Building Council
(USGBC), an American NGO, presented awards to 10
Chinese real estate developers and government
leaders for their "pioneering work in transforming
the world’s largest building industry". The
developers, representing some of China’s largest
construction companies, had one thing in common:
they were the first private sector companies to
pursue the USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED) certification.
The LEED Green Building Rating System is
the internationally accepted benchmark for the
design, construction and operation of high
performance green buildings. It promotes a
whole-building approach to sustainability by
recognizing performance in five key areas of human
and environmental health - sustainable site
development, water savings, energy efficiency,
materials selection and indoor environmental
quality.
In 2003, the Century Prosper
Center, a 150,000 square meter twin office tower
in Beijing’s CBD, was the first large commercial
project in China to be registered for LEED.
Another milestone was reached in 2005 when the
Coastal Greenland Group took the decision to seek
LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED ND)
registration for a large mixed-use development,
also in Beijing. In total there are now 50
construction projects across China that have
applied for LEED certification.
There are
plenty of people on hand to give China advice and
financial help in the sustainability arena.
Starting in 2002, and supported by the US
Department of Energy, the Natural Resources
Defense Council (NRDC), another American NGO,
began work with the Chinese Ministry of Science
and Technology (MoST) on constructing the Agenda
21 Energy-Efficient Office Building in Beijing.
This "living building", which uses 70% less energy
than similar government buildings and saves 10,000
tons of water a year through rainwater collection,
is now finished, and was the first building in
China to receive an LEED Gold rating in 2006.
George Bialecki, founder of the American
NGO Alternative Energy Builders (AEB), feels
energy efficiency is the area where green homes
and offices can bring the biggest benefits in
China. He comments, "Now there is a debate over
which causes more pollution - a home or a car.
Even applying conservative estimates and using a
ratio of 1:1, we can see that if China’s next 100
million homes are green, with drastically reduced
energy requirements, then we are preventing a
pollution increase equivalent to that caused by
100 million new cars. This, in itself, would be an
incredible achievement."
As part of a
project authorized by China’s Ministry of
Construction in 2003, the AEB is involved in
construction of Future House USA, a showcase
sustainable house being built on a site outside
Beijing, along with eco-houses from seven other
countries.
Changing ingrained behavior is
always slow, and it’s too early to say whether
sustainable construction can really help China
meet its environmental goals. Eyes will remain
focused on high-profile projects like Dongtan to
see how the government’s green rhetoric fits in
with the nation’s concern with economic
development. Despite the many problems to be
faced, however, it’s hoped that Chinese developers
will gradually come to appreciate that sustainable
construction is a true win-win proposition, and
that making money and saving the planet don’t have
to be mutually exclusive.
Josh
Adams is a freelance writer and photographer
who has lived in Beijing for the last two
years.
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