Photo by Sean Pollock on Unsplash
The Chinese government is currently drafting the "14th Five-Year Plan", which will set out key policy goals for all sectors for 2021-2025. To provide references and recommendations to strengthen this policy blueprint’s building energy-saving strategies, NRDC collaborated with China Academy of Building Research on the recent report release, Proposal for the "14th Five-Year Plan" - Obstacles and Breakthroughs in Increasing Efficiency of China's Existing Public and Commercial Buildings. Given their high energy intensity and building stock, existing commercial and public buildings have long been the source of potential emission reduction. Right now in China, existing commercial and public buildings account for 38% of the building sector’s total energy consumption so there’s a huge opportunity in the sector for emission reduction. There’s another great opportunity to strengthen energy-saving as a large percentage of public and commercial buildings were built 20 years ago and will need to replace internal facilities such as chilers and pumps during the next five years anyway. This presents a great prospect to strengthen energy-saving during retrofit. The report recommendations include promoting comprehensive sub-system(e.g. chiller plants, ventilation plants and pump systems)energy efficiency improvements instead of just looking at individual appliances, integrating retro-commissioning into building regulation procedures, and increasing energy data transparency. The report was covered by state media and industry media, including People's Daily, Xinhua News Agency and China Industry News.