China Energy Outlook 2020 - Flipbook - Page 84
(MOHURD, 2019b). The development of such advanced standards (also called “stretch codes”)
provides the technical basis for local demonstration projects.
Energy Efficiency Retrofits for Existing Buildings
Retrofits of existing residential, commercial, and public buildings are progressing in line with
the 13th FYP goals, but the phase-out of government subsidies and the building services level
improvements are making it challenging to reduce overall building energy intensity levels.
Retrofitting existing building is greatly important to reducing energy use in the Chinese building
sector. MOHURD issued aggressive existing building retrofit policies since the 11th FYP. By the
end of the 12th FYP, this effort resulted in existing residential building retrofits of 990 million m2
floor space in North China and 70.9 m2 million in China’s transition climate zone. In the 13th
FYP, the goal is to retrofit an additional 500 million m2 of floor space of existing residential
buildings and to finish all existing building retrofit work in North China (MOHURD 2017).
One concern regarding the existing building retrofit policy is that China started to phase out the
existing building subsidy in 2015 and is trying to leverage market mechanisms to invest in
building energy efficiency. As China’s existing building retrofit market, especially for urban
residential buildings, is mainly driven by government public fund investment, the
transformation of the central government subsidy to incentives from local governments
combined with market mechanisms increases the uncertainty of China’s existing building
retrofit progress. For public and commercial buildings, market mechanisms to leverage green
financing investments in retrofitting existing buildings are still lacking. The challenge for public
and commercial building retrofits is that building service levels (e.g. heating and cooling
demand increase due to comfort level improvement, and increased use of building appliances
due to higher living standards) have been continuously improving during the 13th FYP. Thus,
even though China has an aggressive public building retrofit program, the overall energy
intensity of these buildings may not be reduced by the end of the 13th FYP due to building
service level improvement.
Green Buildings Standards and Labels
13th FYP goals and supporting policies for increasing the share of green buildings in new
construction to 50% have been successful even though implementation has been mostly in
eastern China and the less stringent design labels are used more frequently than operational
labels.
China has developed comprehensive supporting policies for its green building rating system,
which applied to buildings that employ sustainable features such as energy efficiency, water
efficiency, green materials, good indoor environmental quality, sustainable construction site
management, etc. By the end of the 12th FYP, China developed 4071 green building projects
certified with green building labels (the “three-star” label). Many cities such as Beijing and
Shanghai have established policies to mandate that new public and commercial buildings
achieve green building requirements. Government invested public buildings (government
offices, schools, hospitals, etc.) are also required to be green buildings in these cities. In the
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