China still building ”energy-guzzling” buildings

China’s developers are still building “energy-guzzling” buildings, flying in the face of sustainability pledges made during their design, state media reported on Monday.

China, facing an uphill battle to secure energy and resources to feed its booming economy, has set targets to make new buildings 50 percent more energy efficient by 2010.
But only 53 percent of China’s new buildings had met national energy-conservation standards, the China Daily said, citing a construction ministry survey which blamed cost-cutting developers.

“The findings are alarming. More comprehensive measures are needed to achieve the national goal,” the paper quoted Song Chunhua, president of the China Real Estate Association, as saying.

Song said developers had “changed their minds” on implementing energy-saving standards and were “still building new energy guzzlers”.

Rapid industrialisation and soaring car ownership have borne much of the blame for China’s choking pollution and rising emissions, but analysts now point to its booming construction industry as a huge drain on global energy stocks.

Construction and building materials consume 16-18 percent of China’s energy use, analysts have estimated, and around half of the world’s new buildings go up in China each year.

Reuters