From the Shanghai Municipal Construction and Management Commission's meeting on advancing the city's three-year action plan for green building development, it was learned that according to the 'Shanghai Green Building Development Three-Year Action Plan (2014-2016)' (hereinafter referred to as the 'Three-Year Action Plan') recently issued by the municipal government, new civil buildings in Shanghai will, in principle, all be constructed to green building one-star or higher standards starting from the second half of this year. By 2016, all new civil buildings within the Outer Ring that are technically suitable will, in principle, adopt prefabricated construction.

Shanghai is currently in a stage of accelerated industrialization and urbanization, with increasingly prominent contradictions between economic and social development and resource and environmental constraints, and an urgent inherent demand for developing green buildings. The so-called 'green building' refers to maximizing energy savings, land savings, water savings, and material savings throughout the building's entire life cycle, protecting the environment and reducing pollution, and providing people with healthy, applicable, and efficient usable space.

Specifically, the Three-Year Action Plan proposes three goals. These include: raising the green standards for new civil buildings in the city. Starting from the second half of 2014, new civil buildings shall, in principle, all be constructed to green building one-star or higher standards. Among them, large public buildings with a single building area of 20,000 square meters or more and office buildings of state organs shall be constructed to green building two-star or higher standards. It is reported that this regulation is at the leading domestic level.

Secondly, promote new prefabricated buildings, requiring each district and county to implement the proportion of construction area of prefabricated buildings in the total construction area, which shall be no less than 25% this year, and by 2016, all new civil buildings within the Outer Ring shall, in principle, adopt prefabricated construction.

Finally, further promote energy-saving renovation of existing buildings, striving to complete a cumulative total of 7 million square meters of energy-saving renovation of existing public buildings over three years, with 4 million square meters achieving a reduction in energy consumption per unit building area of 20% or more after renovation.

It is particularly worth mentioning that the 'Three-Year Action Plan' neither adds new administrative approval items, nor adds new administrative approval procedures or administrative approval time limits. It only requires relevant units to include content related to the implementation of green building-related standards and requirements for new civil buildings in conventional infrastructure procedures and corresponding management activities.

It is hoped that through three years of effort, a development system and technical route that effectively promotes the greening of buildings in the city will be initially formed, achieving leapfrog development from building energy efficiency to green buildings. The green, energy-saving, and environmental protection levels of new buildings will be significantly improved, the level of building industrialization will make significant progress, the energy-saving renovation of existing buildings will be steadily advanced, and the level of green building development will be at the national leading level. Up to now, the city has built and is building more than 110 green building projects, with a total construction area of over 3.5 million square meters. At present, Shanghai has become one of the cities with the largest scale of green building construction and the largest number of projects awarded green building evaluation labels in China.