From prescriptive to outcome-based – the evolution of building energy codes and standards in China

Panel: 6. Buildings policies, directives and programmes

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Wei Feng, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
Michael Bendewald, Rocky Mountain Institute
Xiwang Li, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Zihe Meng, Rocky Mountain Institute
Carolyn Szum
Nan Zhou, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Yani Zeng, Rocky Mountain Institute

Abstract

China consumes approximately 20% of primary energy in its building sector. It is estimated that energy use in buildings will continue to increase in the future due to the fast urbanization process. Codes and standards are widely believed as one of the most effective ways to improve efficiency and reduce energy use and CO2 emission in building sector. China started to develop its own prescriptive building energy codes and standards in the late 1980s. Using the 1980s buildings characteristics as the baselines, the national level prescriptive building codes in China have achieved 50% and 65% energy efficiency improvement. However, buildings meet the prescriptive codes requirements may not yield actual operation energy performance. In order to fill in that gap, China has developed an outcome-based building energy standard trying to regulate actual building energy use in buildings.

This paper reviews international best practice on outcome based building codes. Based on previous study of prescriptive building codes in China, this paper presents the gaps between China’s prescriptive code performance and the proposed outcome based code requirements. To fill the gaps, the paper discusses certain operation measures that influence building energy use in the operation stage, and possible solutions to help buildings complied with prescriptive code performance to meet the proposed outcome based code requirement as well. Finally, this paper discusses about current barriers and feasible policies to solve the issues of compliance and enforcement of the proposed outcome based code.