China is urbanizing at a rapid pace. In 2000, only one in three Chinese lived in urban areas. By 2015, this number had grown to more than 56 percent and is estimated to reach 60 percent and 70 percent by 2020 and 2030, respectively. This trend has been accompanied by vast urban construction, as the building sector is trying to keep up with the 300 million new urban residents expected to arrive in the next 15 years. The growth of Chinese cities has led to immense environmental strains, including high degrees of air, water and soil pollution. Various studies have shown that the construction and maintenance of cities in China, which will witness almost half of the world’s total construction in the next 10 years, accounts for approximately 47 percent of China’s total energy consumption and 60 percent of carbon emissions.
In addition to the devastating effect on the environment, urbanization in China is also accompanied by severe health effects. Air pollution alone accounts for a total of 1.6 million deaths per year. Another major contributor to deterioration of urban health are the buildings themselves. According to the U.S. National Safety Council and Environmental Protection Agency, air pollution in buildings can reach levels 100 times worse than the quality of outside air. Furthermore, most of the newly constructed buildings in China are built primarily to provide basic housing space and often ignore basic human needs for access to nature, nontoxic building materials, aesthetic design and daylight exposure. As on average each person spends about 90 percent of his or her time inside, an ideal indoor environment is of critical importance to human health, as well as to productivity in the workspace.
China’s society and government push for greener and healthier buildings
Green buildings not only offer much needed energy efficiency solutions, they also help to resolve many of the health concerns associated with conventional building sites. They influence human well-being on two critically important scales. Firstly, they directly impact health on the individual level by optimizing indoor environments. Studies found that occupants of green buildings experience various positive health effects, including fewer respiratory symptoms and improved physical and mental health. A 2015 Harvard University study also revealed that green buildings boost productivity, with employees demonstrating cognitive function scores double those of working staff in conventional spaces. Secondly, green buildings also impact health on a population level by reducing energy consumption, air pollutants and by contributing to the mitigation of global warming, which itself is accompanied by an incalculable number of human health concerns.
Structure, design and technology applied in green buildings may contribute to urban health through a number of measures, such as by optimizing air flow and lighting conditions, integrating biophilic design elements and by working with sustainable, natural building materials. Biophilic design, for example, is a green building trend that attempts to reconnect occupants with nature by integrating living natural aspects, such as plants or wooden structures, into offices, apartments and houses. Many green certification systems, including the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) label, point to the positive benefits associated with biophilic design for occupants and have made it an evaluation criterion. The quality of indoor lighting is also of crucial importance for the health of occupants. Particularly essential is the exposure to natural light, the lack of which can cause depression, immune problems and may contribute to diabetes or even cancer. Many green building projects therefore aim to reduce the need for artificial lighting, while arranging rooms and partitions in a way that maximizes daylit areas.
As Chinese people are growing richer and begin to voice their demands for higher quality and improved living conditions, the advantages of green buildings have become increasingly recognized in China. According to the Dodge Data & Analytics “Smart Market Report on World Green Building Trends in 2018”, China, after India, is one of the top two markets interested in healthier buildings. When asked to rate social reasons for building green, 76 percent of respondents from Mainland China named improved occupant health and well-being.
To address the growing demand and to cope with environmental challenges, the Chinese government has, in recent years, begun to forcefully advance mechanisms to retrofit or upgrade the housing stock to meet environmental and health standards. It also pushed the development of green buildings and, within the framework of the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020), promoted health and well-being as core to national development. In March 2017, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) released “China’s 13th Five-Year Plan of Green Building Development”. This publication was followed by the release of an “Assessment Standard for Healthy Building” from the Architectural Society of China (ASC), which puts a strong emphasis on promoting health in indoor environments.
Growing demand for “green” certification in China
Complementing this trend has been a growth in the demand for and number of green building certification systems in China. The government set the target that at least 50 percent of newly constructed buildings have to be “green”-certified by 2020 and 40% of the building materials used in new construction projects should fulfill sustainability criteria. Nearly 20 cities, including Suzhou, Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and Chongqing, have decided for even more ambitious targets, requiring all new commercial buildings to meet specified health and efficiency standards.
Among the green certification systems currently applied in China, the most prominent foreign ones are the American LEED green rating program, which for the first time awarded a Chinese building with an LEED gold rating in 2005, and the International WELL Building Standard, which was founded in 2014 in the U.S. and was introduced in China in 2015. In 2013 the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) launched its DGNB certification system in the country and issued its first pre-certification in gold to the Zhangjiang Science & Culture Exchange Centre – an office building in Shanghai. The German Energy Agency (dena) has also certified a range of buildings for energy-efficient design in the Middle Kingdom throughout the last years. Back in 2006, MOHURD also developed its own Three Star label for sustainable buildings. To further boost the popularity of green certification schemes, different local governments began to offer incentives for planners to attain the highest green building ratings for their projects. One example is the Wuxi City HighTech Industrial Development Zone, which rewards construction projects that achieve the highest ratings in the LEED or the Three Star rating system with a prize of up to 500,000 CNY (about 66,000 EUR).
Most green building certification systems, next to assessing energy efficiency, also place a particular emphasis on human health and well-being by monitoring indoor environmental quality, including indicators such as air and water quality, lighting, comfort and biophilic design. The DGNB system, which has certified or pre-certified a range of structures across China, including in Beijing and provincial capitals such as Nanjing and Guangzhou, for example includes thermal, acoustic and visual comfort, as well as indoor air quality among its rating criteria. Meanwhile, the China State Council’s “Green Building Action Plan” requires that public buildings, such as hospitals or schools, meet the sustainability and health standards of the Three Star system.
The increased emphasis on healthy design also becomes evident in Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated’s (JLL) office at Shanghai’s HKRI Taikoo Hui complex, which at the end of 2017 was the first WELL-certified Platinum project in the Asia Pacific region. Its interior is built to enable ideal airflow, pays attention to maximizing daylit areas and includes many biophilic design elements. Much of its furniture is made of polished reused wood, an eco-wall was integrated to connect floors through natural greenery and a large free-standing fish tank contributes to a relaxed atmosphere.
There are also various projects which use biophilic design on a large scale. Most notable, perhaps, are the plans of Italian star architect Stefano Boeri, who designed the pair of vertical forest towers (“Bosco Verticale”) in Milan. His projects in China include the construction of one “forest city” in Liuzhou – a town in the southern Chinese province Guangxi – and one in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei province. While the Shijiazhuang project is still in the planning phase, the forest city in Liuzhou is under construction since 2017 and is expected to open in 2020. At the same time, two “vertical forest” towers are under construction in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province. Once completed, these objects – covered in millions of plants – will help clean the air, absorb carbon dioxide and provide health and aesthetical benefits to the residents. Boeri hopes that his vertical forests will offer a positive example of green architecture that will inspire others to copy and replicate his approach.
Outlook
While the incessant growth of Chinese cities has caused catastrophic environmental pollution and has posed serious health challenges, growing demand for higher life quality and ambitious government targets in the green building market are a positive sign. Partially due to these efforts, China today is the largest green building market in the world, with a total of more than 90 million sqm of certified green sustainable building space. China also tops lists for LEED certified green buildings, which contribute 68 million square meters to the 90 million, while over 1 million sqm of project space have received the WELL certification. By next year, China is expected to be home to more than half of the world’s green building floor space. According to a 2018 study, sectors with the highest percentage growth of green buildings are new commercial construction (65 percent), new institutional construction (54 percent), new high-rise residential (49 percent) and commercial interiors (43 percent).
China’s strong commitment to the green building sector also gives rise to many opportunities for foreign companies in industries ranging from waste management to insulation, LED lighting, heating, ventilation, air conditioning and refrigeration (HVACR), as well as wind- and solar-powered energy. In many of these industries, German technology remains very popular in China. In 2014 for instance, Germany’s share of China’s windows and doors import market was by far the highest among foreign countries, at a total of 23.8 percent. Similarly, Germany ranked first as China’s main import partner for HVACR, with a share of 21.2 percent. For the lighting industry, Germany ranked second after Japan at 17.8 percent. As China’s green building sector continues to grow, the demand for these and other innovative healthy and energy-efficient high-tech solutions is bound to surge. Given the stakes, there should be no doubt that China’s sprawling urban centers are destined for a green and healthy future.
Article Resource： Econet Monitor Special Green Building
