BCG and NRDC Release New Report on Green Buildings and Sustainable Growth

Improving Building Energy Efficiency by 2015 Could Cut China’s Energy Use by 170 Billion kWh and Reduce CO2 Emissions by 170 Million Tonnes Annually According To A New Joint Report by The Boston Consulting Group and The Natural Resources Defense Council

BCG and NRDC Provide Suggestions On How Government, Building Developers, Commercial Building Tenants, Media and Other Organizations Can Help Improve China’s Environment by Improving Building Efficiency

Improving the energy efficiency of China’ s buildings can help achieve sustainable urbanization and economic growth according to a new report jointly published today by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

In From Gray to Green: How Energy-Efficient Buildings Can Help Make China’s Rapid Urbanization Sustainable (Chinese version available now, English version coming soon), the authors set out the case for improving building efficiency, including estimated potentials of benefits. They also identify the key stakeholder groups in China and suggest actions for each group.

“What is not commonly understood is that building operational use accounts for around 25% of China’s total energy consumption”, said Justin Fung, co-author of the report and a Project Leader in BCG’s Hong Kong office. “That is more energy than China’s cement, iron and steel sectors combined. And if you include energy used for manufacturing and transporting building materials and products, China’s buildings consume 30-40% of the country’s total energy.”

As China’s middle class continues to grow and the population continues to urbanize, the energy consumption of buildings will continue to increase: city residents typically use three times as much electricity as their rural cousins.

Fortunately, as Beijing’s Agenda 21 Building and many similar green buildings in different parts of China have shown, it is feasible to achieve 70% savings in energy consumption by applying existing building efficiency technologies. So the benefits from an aspirational but potentially achievable greening of buildings could be substantial. For example, if by 2015, the end of China’s 12th Five-Year Term, 5% of existing buildings and 60% of new buildings were to achieve levels of energy consumption 50% below those of comparable non-green buildings in similar climate zones, the subsequent annual energy savings would be 170 billion kWh electricity, equivalent to turning off all the lights in America for one month. CO2 emissions would be cut by 170 million tonnes.

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Source: NRDC, 2009-09-07, Link