Challenge 1: Insufficient social awareness; renovation of old buildings has a long way to go

　　Green buildings are still in the early stages of development in China, and a major challenge is insufficient social awareness.

　　Vice Minister of Finance Zhang Shaochun pointed out that at present, the application and development of green buildings in China is still very limited. Some regions lack a correct understanding of the connotation and requirements of green buildings, the standard system is incomplete, and the development of green buildings is slow.

　　In addition, the existing building stock in China's urban areas has exceeded 20 billion square meters, and the task of energy-saving renovation of existing old buildings is arduous.

　　Wang Youwei, vice president of the China Association of Building Energy Efficiency, said that the government has significantly increased subsidies to accelerate the development of green buildings, but the key is to raise social awareness. We should take advantage of the policy incentive "east wind" to mobilize all parties to accelerate the development of green buildings, improve green building-related labels, and strive to let ordinary people understand green buildings, just like buying energy-saving appliances. We need to teach people to look for key green labels and guide the whole society to jointly promote the development of green buildings.

　　This article is from EhvAcr Online

　　Regarding the energy-saving renovation of existing old buildings, Zhang Shaochun also stated that financial subsidies should be effectively increased to strongly support the energy-saving renovation of existing buildings and effectively improve building energy efficiency performance. At present, the Ministry of Finance is comprehensively promoting heat metering and energy-saving renovation of existing residential buildings in northern heating areas, striving to complete the renovation of 1-1.5 billion square meters of old residential buildings with renovation value by 2020. At the same time, focusing on the promotion of applicable technologies such as external shading, building energy-saving renovation in hot summer and cold winter areas has also been recently launched.

　　Challenge 2: Low energy-saving standards; supporting policies urgently need improvement

　　To develop green buildings, the key is to properly address supporting policies and the construction of standard and labeling systems. At present, China's building energy-saving standards are relatively low. The 65% energy-saving standard implemented in various places is only equivalent to Germany's level in the early 1990s, with energy consumption indicators more than twice as high.

　　Wang Youwei pointed out that in addition to low standards, imperfect supporting policies also hinder the development of green buildings. For example, many places use building roofs to develop solar photovoltaics, but cannot connect to the grid for self-use. In addition, some supporting technical regulations need to be improved.

　　In response, Zhang Shaochun said that the next step will be to continuously improve energy-saving standards in accordance with the level of economic and social development. It is hoped that by the end of the "12th Five-Year Plan", the energy-saving standards of first-tier cities in northern China will reach the current level of developed countries, and second- and third-tier cities will generally implement the 65% energy-saving standard.

　　He emphasized that to raise energy-saving standards, incentives and constraints must be strengthened. Administrative means should be used to strictly control design drawing review, construction permits, completion acceptance, and other links. Projects that do not meet energy-saving standards shall not be allowed to start construction or pass completion acceptance. Punitive electricity prices shall be implemented for public buildings that exceed electricity quotas. At the same time, fiscal reward studies should be conducted to gradually provide financial rewards for low-energy buildings that exceed energy-saving standards, effectively enhancing the motivation and pressure to accelerate the development of low-energy buildings. 

　　Challenge 3: Insufficient industrial technology support; building industrialization needs strengthening

　　China's development of green buildings has attracted a large number of foreign green industry investors. The foreign attention to China's green building market precisely exposes the technological gap between China's green industry and the international level.

　　Zhang Shaochun stated that domestic development of green buildings also faces the challenge of insufficient industrial technology support. Building industrialization has just started in China, the comprehensive development and utilization level of resources and energy is obviously low, and the comprehensive capacity building of green buildings needs to be strengthened.

　　Wang Youwei pointed out that at present, many core technologies for developing green buildings are still not mastered domestically. For example, most key components such as heat pump compressors still need to be imported. Industrial concentration is low, and enterprise scale is generally small. The application of new energy in buildings remains at a simple and direct level. Deep utilization such as solar houses and solar heating and air conditioning is very limited, and deep development and application await technological breakthroughs.

　　In addition, in terms of comprehensive utilization of building resources, the resource utilization rate in EU countries currently reaches 50%. China generates 1.5 billion tons of construction waste each year, but the resource utilization rate is less than 10%, occupying a large amount of land and wasting resources.

　　Zhang Shaochun stated that accelerating the development of green buildings fundamentally depends on technological progress and industrial development. In the future, greater efforts will be made to support research and development of major common key technologies for green buildings. In addition, housing industrialization is one of the most effective means to significantly reduce consumption during the building construction process. It is necessary to promote the construction of industrialized bases that integrate design, production, and construction, and effectively accelerate the process of housing industrialization in China. At the same time, with the help of fiscal rewards, comprehensively carry out resource utilization of construction waste in cities at or above the prefecture level as soon as possible, and vigorously promote the large-scale and high-level application of new energy in the building sector.

　　Wang Youwei suggested that to narrow the gap between China and foreign countries in green building technology, the key is to focus on green building technical talents. It is recommended to offer green education courses in domestic universities to reserve more technical talents for accelerating the development of green buildings in the future.