A city with vision;
a wind turbine factory
in Lianyungang.

Solar water heaters are
becoming a very common
sight on residential
developments in China.

Most typical development in
China has not yet adopted
energy efficient measures.

The government is pushing green buildings with 3 major pieces of legislation: the renewable energy law, the 65% efficiency law (from 1978 levels), and the green building assessment system. The Chinese government has already come out with some policies and subsidies to promote green construction and energy efficiency such as subsidies for solar thermal water heating units. It is also considering green power policies. These are all still in the early stages and the government is looking to foreign governments and non-governmental organizations (NRDC, CRS, JUCCCE, and others) for collaboration and guidance.

A Summary of the main issues and recommendations highlighted by our interviewees

Chinese mayors play a key role in expanding green construction. Groups such as JUCCCE and the Clinton Climate Initiative are developing environmental modules for the annual mayoral training programs held throughout China.

Government needs to offer a transparent system of incentives to encourage the purchase of green buildings such as tax breaks as well as direct incentives (for example, a consumer gets a flat amount per sqm to buy a green apartment or building). Utility costs are kept artificially low by the government and raising the price of electricity and gas to market rates would have a fairly immediate effect on energy efficiency. This wouldn't happen overnight but the government recognizes this potential and the State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) recently announced it will enourage the use of market pricing for drinking water and waste water charges. This will raise levels of quality on the supply side and efficiency on the demand side.

A result of subsidized utilities; this man is watering the street to keep the dust down.

Government taxes for developers are quite high with rates of 30-50%. If the government was to enact a tax incentive mechanism it would be very easy to expand green construction.

Government should continue to place less stress on performance measures based on economic growth and expand its recent set of environmental performance metrics for government officials.

Instead of being funded by local governments, local environmental protection bureaus should be paid by the SEPA in Beijing. In addition, SEPA should be made a cabinet-level ministry within the central government.

Government leaders only look at GDP and because there is no real estate tax, only business tax, city officials are incentivized to encourage industry which will help them to meet their GDP targets.

Although sustainable development projects rarely cost more overall, there are clear gains and losses which are often disproportionately distributed. The government needs to redistribute the costs and benefits accordingly among project stakeholders.

INTERVIEW CLIPS, click ‘play’ to see the selected clip from the list below: