Building Energy Conservation Presents both Demand and Market

“Building energy conservation presents both demand and market,”said Yao Bing, deputy director of China Energy-saving Association, on the Sixth Overseas Investment Forum for Chinese Enterprises which has ended recently. It is estimated that the global demands for environmental-protecting products and services have reached 1.3 trillion USD. As the scientific consensus of reducing greenhouse gas emission is translating into real actions, the world economy is undergoing a remarkable transformation into low-carbon development model.

Globally speaking, the EU, U.S. and Japan have listed architectural industry as the development focus of low-carbon and green economy. In Oct. 2008, Al Gore the U.S former vice president wrote an article, in which he mentioned that 10% of the world’s carbon dioxide emission is caused by architectural low efficiency, and it is necessary to change the heating-shielding and sealing performance of the buildings. In 2009, the British government released a plan of “constructing lowcarbon, highly energy-saving buildings”, aiming to achieve zero carbon emission by the year 2050. Since February, 2006, the German government has begun to test new technology ideas about building energy conservation and heat preservation, to have a better control of energy consumption and building conservation structure. China has issued a series of documents and requirements on building energy conservation. In 2009, President Hu Jintao gave a commitment to the world on the World Climate Change Forum, saying that China will save 620 million tons of standard coal and reduce emission of carbon dioxide by 1.5 billion tons in the future five years.

Yan Libing, vice director of the Economic Information Department of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, pointed out that in recent years, China’s “Twelfth Five-year Plan”gave priority to developing emerging strategic industries, which combine high-end technologies with emerging industry, and represent the future trend of technological innovation and industry development. The building industry is an industry where China has been long involved into global competition, and has accumulated strength. The integration of the building industry and emerging industry will focus on the building energy conservation featuring new material and new sources of energy. This is the future development trend of international building industry and also the international cooperation.

Yao continued that energy-saving building material is an industry which includes industrial heatinsulating material, glass door and window industry, walling material industry and other associated industries, like water proof sealing industry. Strictly speaking, the building materials shall meet the demands of energy saving and gas emission. Currently, the building energy conservation has made clear requirements on the climate conditions of different regions, and these requirements have become stricter as the building energy-saving industry develops, so the energy-saving building materials are more and more important. However, Ye Jing thinks that nowadays China is strong in heat insulating material and has low production costs, but still lags behind the developed countries in terms of product quality. Many developed countries have made use of the tax subsidy policy to promote solar power generation, and feed the electricity into the national electricity grid. Ye also mentioned that his company will introduce the foreign advanced technology into its production process.

Now China is the world’s largest solar water heater producer, with the annual production twice of Europe and four times of North America. It keeps an annual growth rate of 20%. Also as the world’s largest PV producer, China boasts 40% of the world total production, with 96% of its products for export. The renewable energy has been used to building process to solve the high energy consumption problem. Director Yao said that if the buildings could transform the solar power into electricity, and form a photo electricity building industry, it should require the integration of technologies in both PV and building industries, and there is still a lot of work to do.

Also, Yao said that new buildings will be the most worthy of investments. The commercial residential building, indemnificatory housings should also consider the energy savings. There were 10 million newly-built houses last year, and this year it will be 7 million houses. During the “Twelfth Five-year Plan” period, we still have 36 million set of houses to build. The construction or reconstruction of large public facilities will be the section where we will have largest energy-saving potentials. Both developing and developed countries will have such demands.

Li Zheng, vice director of the construction industry sub-council, China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, told reporters that since the reform and opening-up policy was implemented, the international trade has been undergoing a rapid growth, especially the construction industry. The value of foreign contract projects has been growing from 450 million in 1983 to 103.4 billion in 2011, growing by 239 times and even faster than the export growth rate. This shows the great role that has been played by the construction industry in the international trade. Now Australia still has 200 thousand houses in deficit, which might impact the residential needs of the people. Demands for houses will be much higher in developing countries, especially the affordable houses provided by the government. Take the relocation of city slums in Brazil for example, Li said that the Brazilian president has promised to build 2 million low-price houses before 2014, which is very difficult for local governments. Salvado plans to build 75,000 houses with 24-30 sq. m floor space and 3,000 USD in price. The western countries are unwilling to undertake such projects but we could construct these houses with renewable resources. Now we are signing a cooperation agreement with them, which is being implemented.

According to Li’s introduction, our country is now providing integration buildings, which are assembled on site in the production factories. Compared with Japan, we use more light wood structure, low-cost straw and phosphorous or magnesia cement. The container housing has been growing very fast in recent two years. For example, at the Guangzhou Model Exhibition, the exhibition space of container housing has doubled. Most of the survived houses in the Japanese earthquaketriggered tsunami are belong to container housing or steel structure housing. Regarding demands for houses, the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade organized a foreign exhibition of domestic houses in 2010, in which the strawmade house (15 sq. m. model) is very popular among local public. Our houses even captured the headline of local papers, showing great potential demands for such products.

Li thinks that nowadays the foreign market has the following demands for the construction industry products: the first, the building material products, which should be manufactured by factories. Some products displayed and sold at the exhibition feature roof with solar panel and glass that absorbs solar power to generate electricity. Products like this will have huge market demands. Second, City construction products that include water or garbage treatment products and equipment, twice purification factory, sewage water factory. Third, city greenery products featuring multi-layer greenery technology or equipment, which will play an importance role in city environment improvement. Fourth, urban traffic products, in the scientific exhibition last year, which is broadcasted by CCTV, one of our business partners bring the multiple decker bus, with the upper decker holding walking passengers, and the below decker for automobiles. We will also present a multi-layer parking lot in a new parking facility exhibition in November. Fifth, the solar energy products featuring solar power equipment.

As a conclusion, Li said that our country has huge demands for the construction industry products. So we have to organize the industry and pave the way leading to the global market. If our products could be exported to foreign countries, it will greatly change the product structure of our country’s export.