Starting from 1995, China has introduced Minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) for both new and refurbished residential buildings in all cities of its four most important national climate zones (rural areas are not targeted by the current MEPS). Highly notable is the compliance with MEPS, in which China has recently managed to reach almost 100%. The MEPS enforcement in some small less-developed cities still needs to be improved. The standards were designed to improve thermal comfort and the energy efficiency of heating and air conditioning systems in residential buildings. They also stipulate that the target building must apply energy efficiency measures for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Furthermore, they require a minimum energy saving level of 50% (Hot Summer and Cold Winter Zone and Hot Summer and Warm Winter Zone) and 65% (in the Severe Cold and Cold Zones) that the new residential building must achieve, in comparison with the local representative residential reference building without any energy efficiency measures (as built in the 1980ies) under the same indoor thermal environment requirement.
In addition to the MEPS for residential buildings, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) has introduced Design Standard for Energy Efficiency of Public Buildings in 2005, which has also set up standards for indoor environment, thermal performance and equipment of commercial and public buildings in the service sector, which are called ‘public buildings’ in China. It demands that energy consumption of annual heating and cooling, ventilation and lighting should be reduced at least 50% to those under the same indoor thermal environment. In 2008, Ordinance on Civil-building Energy Conservation was promulgated by MOHURD, again emphasizing the importance of energy efficiency in civil-building works.
To enforce the rules that newly constructed buildings be designed to energy efficient standards, MOHURD has published a series of notices to clarify the responsibility and duty of concerned organizations, such as Notice on New Residential Buildings Strictly Enforcing the Energy Conservation Design Standard, Notification about strengthening the building energy efficiency examination of civil building projects, and that behaviour which violates the rules shall be legally accountable. MOHURD has also released Code for acceptance of energy efficient building construction in 2007, to specify the rules for an acceptance check period and about the energy efficiency design principles for projects.
From design to acceptance check, all kinds of standards have guaranteed the construction of energy-efficient buildings in every stage. To ensure compliance with the standard, MOHURD initiated the annual national inspection on building energy efficiency from 2004. The implementation rate of the design standard of new building energy efficiency is publicised after the inspection, which increased from 53% in 2005 to 99.5% in 2010. From 2006 to 2010, energy savings of 46 million tons of standard coal (equivalent to 1348.12 PJ) were achieved in new buildings by 2010, with a net economic benefit to the inhabitants (MOHURD 2010).
Many countries have implemented MEPS for buildings since the 1970s or 1980s. Many of these advanced countries have already achieved energy savings of 50 to 75% in today’s new buildings as compared to conventional building practices of the past. One example is Germany. It has reduced the maximum allowed primary energy demand for heating from around 270 kWh/m2/yr in 1977 to around 70 kWh/m2/yr in 2009. Other advanced countries are Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. However, these countries have taken much longer time than China to achieve such somewhat higher levels of energy savings, and in many countries the compliance regime is weaker and the compliance rate is lower than that in China.
Until the end of 2009, the urbanization level of China achieved 46.6% and the total built-up area in urban and rural China was 44 billion m2. Every year there are more than 700,000 projects under construction and the newly built area is around 2 billion m2 each year, which makes up about half of the world’s new construction. The resource consumption and environment impact of the building industry is tremendous and the Chinese government therefore attaches much importance to the building energy efficiency issue.
Before the introduction of MEPS, buildings usually had no insulation and single-pane windows. Especially in the cold climate zones this led to both low thermal comfort, particularly in winter, and relatively high energy consumption. For example in Beijing, buildings dating from before 1990 needed between 100 and 167 kWh/m2/year for heating (see the next table).
China’s building energy efficiency (BEE) work experience can be concluded as integrating six aspects: special institutional framework establishment for BEE; central and local policy-making; technical standard formulation and implementation; capacity building and dissemination; R&D and promotion of advanced technology, products; law enforcement and supervision.
| Type of energy use | Residential building (kWh/m2/yr) | |||
| Beijing Area | Xian Area | Shanghai Area | Guangzhou Area | |
| Heat consumption for heating | 65 | 55 | 15 | - |
| Cooling consumption | 8 | 9 | 14 | 20 |
| Electricity consumption for air-conditioning (including the use for heating in Shanghai and Guangzhou) | 3 | 3.4 | 10 | 7 |
| Total electricity consumption (including household appliances) | 18 | 19 | 25 | 22 |
Source: THUBERC 2010
They are all national policies.
However, most of the provinces have their own energy-efficient design standards for residential buildings designed in accordance with national standards, like Beijing, Hubei, Anhui etc. The national standard is prevailing and is the basis. The local standards always have stricter efficiency requirements. But their calculation methods are the same. Some of the provinces choose to use the national standard for responding climate zones, like Yunnan, Hainan etc.
Altogether, the set of MEPS and accompanying regulations covers civil buildings i.e. residential, commercial and public buildings.
The standards provide the regulation for energy consumption-related indicators of building envelope, heating, central air-conditioning and ventilation, and proposed energy efficiency measures as well. For example: the suggestions of painting colours on a building’s roof and envelope, metering of central heating system, use of water source heat pumps, adopting renewable energy equipment etc. For HVAC, residential building design standards have proposed some selection advice on cooling and heating source schemes, while the ‘public building’ design standard has made some specific requirements about heating, ventilation, air conditioning, pipe network and building-in automated monitoring.
In this policy set, the following action for building energy efficiency design is targeted.
| Heat transfer coefficient K [W/(m2·K)] for severe cold zone (A) (5500≤HDD18＜8000) | ||||||
| Building Floors | ≤3 | 4～8 | 9～13 | ≥14 | ||
| Roof | 0.20 | 0.25 | 0.35 | 0.40 | ||
| Wall | 0.25 | 0.40 | 0.45 | 0.50 |
| Building Orientation | Window to Wall ratio | |
| Severe cold zone | Cold zone | |
| Building Floors | ≤0.25 | ≤0.30 |
| Severe cold zone | ≤0.30 | ≤0.35 |
| Cold zone | ≤0.45 | ≤0.50 |
Source: China Building
| Building shape coefficient (m2/m3) | ||||||
| Building Floors | ≤3 | 4～8 | 9～13 | ≥14 | ||
| Severe cold zone | ≤0.50 | ≤0.30 | ≤0.28 | ≤0.23 | ||
| Cold zone | ≤0.52 | ≤0.33 | ≤0.30 | ≤0.25 |
The policy set is adequate to address the existing barriers and obstacles for the following reasons:
The design standards all set the legal requirement for 50% (65%) energy saving for all new residential buildings and public buildings and provide the target group with the necessary information including the indoor thermal environment design calculation index, building and envelope thermal design information, integrated judgement methods of building envelope thermal performance, and energy-efficient design of heating, air-conditioning and ventilation.
Notices ensure the energy efficiency concerned standards have clarified the duty and responsibility of organizations taking part in construction. Any behaviour which violates the rules shall be legally accountable. Standards for acceptance check have specified the content of the acceptance check on sectional work, including item of random checks, frequency and target required.
The policy set interacts with other policies or policy sets focussing energy efficiency in buildings as part of a policy package.
Professional training is one of these measures. For example: between August 11-13th 2010, MOHURD held a training of Policy 1 and Policy 2 in Beijing, which targeted the officers of local construction bureaus, architects, HVAC engineers and people in related institutes. The trainees were given a qualification certificate when passing an exam during the training.
On June 6th of 2007, MOHURD held a conference for publicizing and training of Policy 8 ‘Code for acceptance of energy efficient building construction’ in Beijing and around 300 people attended this event.
In general, this Policy set interacts with ‘Civil Building Energy-efficiency Evaluation and Labelling’, the energy label is one incentive for implementing energy efficiency standards and related policies. The ‘100 Green Building Demonstration Projects and 100 Energy Efficient Building Demonstration Projects’ also improve visibility of energy efficiency in buildings.
Policy 5 ‘Design Standard for Energy Efficiency of Public Buildings’ interacts with policies on the energy efficiency management of government buildings, office buildings and large public buildings.
It is a planned interaction of instruments. They are not competing with each other.
The following elements of the policy can be regarded as innovative:
The mandatory provisions of the 3 energy efficient design standards for residential buildings (Policy 1-3), standard for energy efficiency of public buildings (Policy 5), standard for acceptance check of energy efficient projects (Policy 8) and Ordinance on Civil-building Energy Conservation (Policy 6) are strictly enforced under the management of the government. The design and acceptance check codes also point out the quantitative index (percentage) of buildings that meet the energy efficiency target.
When the technical standards were issued, MOHURD published a series of notices to promote the enforcement, such as Policy 4 and 7. These notices and standards interact with each other.
The MEPS were already improved in the past.
The first Chinese BEE design standard was issued in 1986, afterwards, BEE design standards for heating area in North China were updated respectively in 1995 (50% saving) and in 2010 (Policy 2: 65% saving). Policy 1 was revised from the older version in 2001. The major revisions included reassuring the thermal performance requirements of building envelope and technical measures to control the energy use of heating and air-conditioning; building new integrated judgement methods for thermal performance of building envelope; and providing the control and metering measures of heating and air-conditioning.
Currently, it’s required that new residential buildings be designed energy efficiently saving 50% or 65% vs. the baseline and at 50% for public buildings. However, as the development of energy efficiency technology and its mandatory implementation, the energy efficiency level will be raised in the near future. For example: Beijing plans to enforce the 75% BEE design standard during the ‘12th five year plan’.
The policy package can be optimised too. BEE design standards should give clear information of the provinces or cities covered by each standard and increase the cost benefit approach of the energy efficiency measures.
Agencies or other actors responsible for implementation
Every year the local construction bureaus are required to examine the BEE approach during the building project quality inspection, order the immediate corrections and report to MOHURD before October. Afterwards, MOHURD will carry out the annual national inspection on BEE and designate an inspection team to each city to do the random check based on the local construction bureau’s report. The regions and cities with problems will be concerned in particular.
Funding
Costs of preparation and implementation of the policy are borne by normal state and city budgets.
Test procedures
The design standards include the procedures and rules for calculating the energy performance of a planned new building in comparison to that of the reference building.
Energy efficiency requirements and compliance
MEPS, of course, need a definition of the maximum allowed energy consumption of a building. In the Chinese MEPS, this is provided by the characteristics of a baseline building and the percentage of energy savings to be achieved compared to the baseline (50 or 65%).
In addition to this, Policy 4, 6, 7 & 8 provide the regulations for compliance of BEE design standards, BEE examination and inspection, construction process control and so on.
For example, Policy 4 stipulates that the examination organisations have to strictly examine the design documents in accordance with the BEE design standards and list all the qualified articles in the report with and endorse them with a signature and stamp. Where there are unqualified articles in the design, the conclusion has to clearly point them out and the project will not be given a construction permit.
Pre-study, stakeholder and expert consultation, ex-ante impact and cost assessment, building construction drawing examination, on-site investigation for a sample of buildings, ex-post inspection.
Quantified target
There is no absolute national overall energy savings target but the expected overall energy savings were calculated ex ante (see below).
The particular technical target is to promote residential building energy savings by 50% (Policy 1 and 3) and 65% (Policy 2) through rational building energy efficiency design, enhancing building envelope insulation performance and improving the energy efficiency ratio (EER) of air-conditioning and heating systems.
It means the equivalent coal or electricity consumption for heating and air-conditioning of the new residential building is 50% (65%) lower than the representative residential building designed during 1980-1981.
Actors responsible for design
Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People's Republic of China, MOHURD
Actors responsible for implementation
The construction administration departments (including central and local construction organisations) and other relevant units, like property development companies, construction companies, building design organizations etc.
Monitoring
The monitoring system for compliance and tracking the data necessary for evaluation is organised as follows:
Every year the local construction bureaus are required to examine the BEE approach during the building project quality inspection, order the immediate corrections and report to MOHURD before October. Since 2004, MOHURD carried out the annual national inspection (for both design and construction) on BEE and designated an inspection team to cities all around the country to do the random checks based on local construction bureaus’ reports. The regions and cities with problems will be concerned in particular.
Every year, MOHURD arranges about 10 groups (at least 10 persons per group) of inspection officers and experts to different provinces of China and for a period of around two weeks. MOHURD pays for the return air tickets and local governments pay for all the other costs for the groups.
What data does it record?
Implementation rate of the standard of new residential buildings and energy saving data; retrofit of existing buildings in Northern China; introduction rate of energy consumption monitoring and energy management systems as well as the number of energy audits realised in government buildings and large-scale public buildings; renewable energy use in buildings; green building and eco city development; BEE development in rural areas; and use of new wall materials.
Evaluation
MOHURD publicizes all the BEE related work in a report on its official website when the inspection is finished (MOHURD 2005, MOHURD 2007, MOHURD 2008, MOHURD 2009, MOHURD 2010).
In the 2007 report, implementation rate of BEE standards of new buildings subject to MEPS in design phase was 97%, and in the construction phase it was 71% for Jan.-Oct. 2007. The calculated annual energy saving of new energy-efficient buildings constructed in this year is 5 million tons of standard coal (147PJ) (MOHURD 2007).
In the 2009 report, implementation rate of BEE standards of new building in the design phase was 99% and in the construction phase was 90% for 2009. The new energy-efficient building area was 0.96 billion m2 in China in 2009 and its calculated annual energy saving was 9 million tons of standard coal (264PJ) for 2009 (MOHURD 2009).
In the 2010 report, implementation rate of BEE standards of new building in the design phase was 99.5% and in the construction phase was 95.4% until the end of 2010. The new energy-efficient building area was 1.22 billion m2 in China in 2010 and its calculated annual energy saving was 11.5 million tons of standard coal (337PJ) for 2010 (MOHURD 2010).
If construction projects are found to be not complying with the standards during the inspection, MOHURD will issue a rectification order. In the next year of inspection, review of those projects' rectification results will be one of the inspection team's tasks. This led to a great improvement of the implementation rate from year to year.
No cost analysis was mentioned in the report of the national BEE inspection.
Sustainability aspects
By setting minimum internal comfort requirements (18°C in winter, 26°C in summer) the regulation considers health aspects.
When the building energy efficiency (BEE) standards (old versions before 2001) were first implemented, there was a lack of incentive policy and/or monitoring system through the whole process of building construction.
The following action has been taken to overcome these barriers:
Firstly, it is stipulated that building construction drawings must be examined by the local construction bureau, especially on aspects regulated by BEE standards. Secondly, the BEE inspection (for both design and construction) is carried out every year all around the country, which is organized by MOHURD.
If construction projects are found to be not complying with the standards during the inspection, MOHURD will issue a rectification order. In the next year of inspection, review of those projects' rectification results will be one of the inspection team's tasks. This led to a great improvement of the implementation rate during the last years.
The section of building industry in China’s 11th five-year plan gave the predicted data for building energy efficiency (BEE) work, which have been cited here as the expected energy saving (MOHURD 2006).
The expected building energy saving in China in the 11th five-year plan (2006-2010) was 110 million tons of standard coal (3224 PJ). This splits into 70 million tons of standard coal by new buildings with compliance of BEE design standards, 30 million tons of standard coal by existing buildings’ BEE retrofit, and 10.4 million tons of standard coal by promoting energy efficient lighting. All of these figures were calculated in comparison to the respective baselines (e.g. the defined baselines for the MEPS of the new buildings) (MOHURD 2006).
Included in the aforementioned 70 million tons of standard coal by newly-built energy efficient buildings, 22.8 million tons is for public buildings, 21 million tons (615 PJ) is for residential buildings in severe cold and cold zones, 24 million tons (703 PJ) for residential buildings in hot summer cold winter zones and 2.2 million tons (64 PJ) for residential buildings in hot summer warm winter zones (MOHURD 2006).
In the 2010 report of annual inspection by MOHURD, the newly-built energy efficient building area was 1.22 billion m2 and its calculated annual energy savings were 11.5 million tons of standard coal (337PJ), by way of enforcement of BEE mandatory standards both in design and construction phase. Overall, from 2006 to 2010, energy savings in 2010 of 46 million tons of standard coal (equivalent to 1348.12 PJ) were achieved in new buildings, with a net economic benefit to the inhabitants (MOHURD 2010).
Buildings in North China: In the 2011 annual report on Chinese Building Energy Efficiency by Building Energy Research Center of Tsinghua University (THUBERC), the change of building energy consumption per m2 from 1996-2008 has been shown in 5 different ways, which are heating in urban North China, heating in urban Summer hot and Winter cold zones, urban residential building (heating excluded), residential buildings in rural China, and public building (heating excluded). Only the consumption for heating in urban North China reduced from 24.3 kgce/m2/yr in 1996 to 17.4 kgce/m2/yr in 2008, while all the other types show increasing trend during this period. That is because the heating demand is relatively stable compared to rising air-conditioning demand, so the impact of a building envelope’s thermal performance improvement on energy consumption of building in North China is more visible in overall energy consumption statistics. These differences reflect the fact that the abovementioned changes in energy consumption are only partly related to the policy set described here. Instead, they represent the aggregate effect of both all energy efficiency policies in force during that period, and economic factors such as increasing levels of income, which lead, e.g., to rising demand for air-conditioning (THUBERC 2011).
Residential buildings: The next table provides the energy consumption level of residential buildings of typical cities in China if using normal BEE measures, which is calculated by THUBERC with reference to the energy consumption investigation result. For example: the electricity consumption of residential buildings in Beijing can be assumed on average as 18 kWh/m2/yr.
| Type of energy use | Residential building [kWh/m2/yr] | |||
| Beijing Area | Xian Area | Shanghai Area | Guangzhou Area | |
| Heat consumption for heating | 65 | 55 | 15 | - |
| Cooling consumption | 8 | 9 | 14 | 20 |
| Electricity consumption for air-conditioning (including the use for heating in Shanghai and Guangzhou) | 3 | 3.4 | 10 | 7 |
| Total electricity consumption (including household appliances) | 18 | 19 | 25 | 22 |
Source: THUBERC 2010
The next two tables represent the investigation results of the government office building’s energy consumption data of typical cities in China. The average electricity consumption (central heating of North China is not included) for an office building in China is 48.6 kWh/m2/yr. Most of the office buildings’ energy consumption is between 50 to 70 kWh/m2/yr, and small number of them are between 120-150 kWh/m2/yr (THUBERC 2010).
| City | No. of static samples | Total building area (m2) | Average energy consumption [kWh/m2/yr] |
| Beijing | 102 | 2149921 | 73.6 |
| Shanghai | 284 | 1976531 | 87.4 |
| Chongqing | 159 | 990521 | 68.5 |
| Dalian | 9 | 206218 | 62.0 |
| Qingdao | 83 | 755180 | 53.3 |
| Shenzhen | 13 | 350953 | 85.3 |
| Hebei | 51 | 556667 | 64.15 |
| Liaoning | 120 | 715072 | 38.8 |
| Jiangsu | 176 | 1165740 | 109.0 |
| Shandong | 355 | 3537151 | 52.0 |
| Guangdong | 81 | 741072 | 60.7 |
| Guangxi | 474 | 3375600 | 75.8 |
| Hainan | 25 | 339918 | 66.8 |
| Sichuan | 16 | 164633 | 45.8 |
| Shaanxi | 20 | 204364 | 42.6 |
Source: THUBERC (2011); Building energy consumption publication websites of different cities and provinces in 2007
| Province / City | Average energy consumption |
| Shenzhen’s government office building | 88.5 |
| Fuzhou’s government office building | 74.4 |
| Chengdu’s commercial office building | 71.4 |
| Chengdu’s government office building | 61.3 |
| Zhaoqing’s government office building | 49.2 |
| Hebei’s government office building | 57.1 |
| Hainan’s government office building | 50.6 |
| Jiangsu’s government office building | 103.8 |
| Hubei’s government office building | 81.4 |
| Guangxi’s government office building | 112.6 |
Source: THUBERC (2010); Building energy consumption publication websites of different cities and provinces from 2006-2008
The no. of samples of Hubei and Guangxi is less than 30, so the data of these two cannot be taken into account.
Shenzhen Institute of Building Research (IBR) made an analysis on the energy auditing data of 368 ‘public buildings’, i.e. commercial and public service sector buildings in Shenzhen, covering a building area of 17.6 million m2. A comparison was made between the buildings before and after 2005, when the BEE design standard for public building (Policy 5) was issued. The average energy consumption of the investigated public buildings before 2005 was 140.2 kWh/m2/yr , and the ones built in and after 2005 reduced to 121.5 kWh/m2/yr by a total of 13.3%. The change was different in various types of buildings (referred to the next table). For example: the energy consumption for an information center building’ showed a significant increase of 68.5% due to the great change of function and equipment cooling load.
| Public Building Type | Energy consumption before 2005 [kWh/m2/yr] | Energy consumption after 2005 [kWh/m2/yr] | Energy consumption reduction |
| Office building | 103.6 | 104.5 | -0.9% |
| Shopping mall | 287.1 | 205.6 | 28.4% |
| Hotel | 237.7 | 162.8 | 31.5% |
| Integrated Building | 128.5 | 123.3 | 4% |
Source: Shenzhen Institute of Building Research (IBR)
The implementation rate of mandatory building energy efficiency standards for all new building in China that are subject to the MEPS during design stage was 99.5% till the end of 2010. The implementation rate during construction stage was 95.4%. The two sets of data were respectively increased by 42% and 71% in comparison with 2005.
Compared to the baseline building as defined in the MEPS, the energy savings required and achieved by the MEPS were 50% to 65%, which is quite significant. It is unknown how much more energy savings could be achieved by best available low-energy building designs in China at present.
No information on the incremental cost of the energy efficiency improvement in the building to comply with the MEPS is available.
However, the regulation for energy saving levels in the BEE design standards helps to set the energy saving targets for all projects, and in that way some BEE options gradually became basic strategy. Therefore, the benefits are expected to be greater than the cost.
The regulation for energy saving levels in the BEE design standards helps to set the energy saving target for all projects. In that way, some BEE options gradually became basic strategy and their costs are reduced due to economies of scale. Therefore, the benefits are expected to be greater than the cost, both for the inhabitants and for society a a whole. However, no real analysis of these issues is available to us.
Public buildings:
The next two tables represent the investigation results of the government office building’s energy consumption data of typical cities in China. The average electricity consumption (central heating of North China is not included) for an office building in China is 48.6 kWh/m2/yr. Most of the office buildings’ energy consumption is between 50 to 70 kWh/m2/yr, and small number of them are between 120-150 kWh/m2/yr (THUBERC 2010).
The regulation for energy saving levels in the BEE design standards helps to set the energy saving target for all projects, and in that way some BEE options gradually became basic strategy. Therefore, the benefits are expected to be greater than the cost for the inhabitants
The costs of policy and compliance monitoring are rather small compared to the energy saved by energy efficient building design.
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