The Chinese government is considering plans to subsidize the use of energy-efficient materials and renewable energy
technologies in new buildings and is encouraging provincial and municipal governments to impose stricter efficiency
standards than the national minimums, Chinese officials said Wednesday.
China’s heightened interest in saving energy — a response to electricity shortages and blackouts this year as well as
longer-term security worries about dependence on energy imports — comes as the country’s construction industry continues
to barrel ahead at a breathtaking pace. Last year, China consumed eight times as much cement as the world’s second-largest
consumer, India, and it now leads the world in consumption of steel and other industrial materials by wide margins.
With 13 million to 21 million rural people in China migrating to cities each year — a number comparable to the 18.9 million
people in metropolitan New York — the real estate industry has been putting up office towers and apartment buildings at a
brisk pace but often with little regard for energy efficiency.
Chinese estimates show that the country’s commercial office buildings use 10 to 20 percent less electricity per square meter
than comparable Western buildings. But the savings tend to come not from better designs but from thermostats set as high as
26 degrees Celsius (79 Fahrenheit) in summer and as low as 18 degrees (64 Fahrenheit) in winter.
Senior executives in the glass manufacturing and other material industries said that Chinese construction companies had
long chosen low-cost, less insulated materials because buildings in China tended to change hands so frequently that owners
seldom looked at long-term paybacks from electricity savings.
The construction boom is a central reason China passed the United States last year as the world’s largest consumer of
electricity. China has also passed the United States as the world’s largest emitter of global warming gases, although it lags far
behind in emissions and electricity consumption per person, because it has more than four times as many people as the
United States.
Hao Bin, the building energy-efficiency director at the Chinese Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said
Wednesday that the ministry had already adopted an energy labeling system for new commercial and government buildings
but wanted to create fiscal incentives for developers to use more efficient materials and adopt renewable energy. The most
effective course seems to lie in subsidies for materials, as government studies have suggested that tax credits would be less
effective, he said.
Some Chinese cities and provinces, from Beijing in the northeast to Yunnan in the southwest, already have limited subsidies
for construction supplies, including insulation and rooftop solar water heaters. The heaters have water-filled steel tubes that
zigzag in front of a reflective surface, which concentrates the sun’s rays on the tubes.
The Chinese central government has begun taking preliminary steps to subsidize the installation of rooftop photovoltaic solar
panels, but the Finance Ministry has moved slowly because of concerns about the potential cost. China already manufactures
more than half the world’s solar panels, but exports almost all of them.
Mr. Hao declined to provide a date for the introduction of a national incentive policy for energy-efficient construction
materials and did not specify what materials would qualify. But he said that it was a focus of policy planners.
The question that policy makers are asking themselves, he said, is, “How can we have a carrot policy which is supplemented
by our labeling system?”
Provincial governments have already begun subsidizing the construction of factories that produce energy-efficient products
like triple-layer insulated glass.
Hongda Vacuum, a manufacturer of glass-coating equipment for solar panels and insulated windows, bought valuable land
next to a large road six years ago on the outskirts of Changsha in Hunan Province for a third of the cost at the time for
industrial land, said Huang Le, a marketing executive for the company. Surging land prices since then meant that the
property soon became worth 10 times as much on the market as the price the company had paid for it, with a discount, in
2005, he said in an interview last year.
The Chinese government is considering plans to subsidize the use of energy-efficient materials and renewable energy
technologies in new buildings and is encouraging provincial and municipal governments to impose stricter efficiency
standards than the national minimums, Chinese officials said Wednesday.
China’s heightened interest in saving energy — a response to electricity shortages and blackouts this year as well as
longer-term security worries about dependence on energy imports — comes as the country’s construction industry continues
to barrel ahead at a breathtaking pace. Last year, China consumed eight times as much cement as the world’s second-largest
consumer, India, and it now leads the world in consumption of steel and other industrial materials by wide margins.
With 13 million to 21 million rural people in China migrating to cities each year — a number comparable to the 18.9 million
people in metropolitan New York — the real estate industry has been putting up office towers and apartment buildings at a
brisk pace but often with little regard for energy efficiency.
Chinese estimates show that the country’s commercial office buildings use 10 to 20 percent less electricity per square meter
than comparable Western buildings. But the savings tend to come not from better designs but from thermostats set as high as
26 degrees Celsius (79 Fahrenheit) in summer and as low as 18 degrees (64 Fahrenheit) in winter.
Senior executives in the glass manufacturing and other material industries said that Chinese construction companies had
long chosen low-cost, less insulated materials because buildings in China tended to change hands so frequently that owners
seldom looked at long-term paybacks from electricity savings.
The construction boom is a central reason China passed the United States last year as the world’s largest consumer of
electricity. China has also passed the United States as the world’s largest emitter of global warming gases, although it lags far
behind in emissions and electricity consumption per person, because it has more than four times as many people as the
United States.
Hao Bin, the building energy-efficiency director at the Chinese Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, said
Wednesday that the ministry had already adopted an energy labeling system for new commercial and government buildings
but wanted to create fiscal incentives for developers to use more efficient materials and adopt renewable energy. The most
effective course seems to lie in subsidies for materials, as government studies have suggested that tax credits would be less
effective, he said.
Some Chinese cities and provinces, from Beijing in the northeast to Yunnan in the southwest, already have limited subsidies
for construction supplies, including insulation and rooftop solar water heaters. The heaters have water-filled steel tubes that
zigzag in front of a reflective surface, which concentrates the sun’s rays on the tubes.
The Chinese central government has begun taking preliminary steps to subsidize the installation of rooftop photovoltaic solar
panels, but the Finance Ministry has moved slowly because of concerns about the potential cost. China already manufactures
more than half the world’s solar panels, but exports almost all of them.
Mr. Hao declined to provide a date for the introduction of a national incentive policy for energy-efficient construction
materials and did not specify what materials would qualify. But he said that it was a focus of policy planners.
The question that policy makers are asking themselves, he said, is, “How can we have a carrot policy which is supplemented
by our labeling system?”
Provincial governments have already begun subsidizing the construction of factories that produce energy-efficient products
like triple-layer insulated glass.
Hongda Vacuum, a manufacturer of glass-coating equipment for solar panels and insulated windows, bought valuable land
next to a large road six years ago on the outskirts of Changsha in Hunan Province for a third of the cost at the time for
industrial land, said Huang Le, a marketing executive for the company. Surging land prices since then meant that the
property soon became worth 10 times as much on the market as the price the company had paid for it, with a discount, in
2005, he said in an interview last year.
（转自The New York Times (tiered subscription model)）