Building energy efficiency policy in Chinese cities and comparison with international cities

Panel: 3. Policy and governance

This is a peer-reviewed paper.

Authors:
Wei Feng, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
Xu Liu, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
Luke Sherlock, C40 Cities
Nan Zhou, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
Hongyou Lu, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
Xia Wang, Chongqing University, China
Jing Hou, Tsinghua University, China
Virginie Letschert, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA

Abstract

Buildings consume approximate 30% of the world total primary energy annually. With the fast global urbanization, urban building sector has become the major energy consumer and greenhouse gases emitter around the world.In China, residential, commercial and public buildings in cities consume 80% of China’s building sector total energy. To control the fast increase of buildings energy use, cities in China have issued policies to improve energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emission.

This paper reviews four Chinese cities (Beijing, Fuzhou, Qingdao, and Shanghai Changning) policies and experience on energy efficiency and renewable energy utilization in buildings. Different aspects of policies in Chinese cities are discussed, including: existing building retrofit, ultra-low energy buildings, and renewable energy application.To contrast with the Chinese cities’ policies, several international cities building energy efficiency policies are reviewed and compared. International cities' policy best practices in the similar areas with Chinese are illustrated.Finally, recommendations for Chinese cities to further develop building energy efficiency policies are discussed.