General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out when presiding over the 11th collective study session of the Political Bureau of the 20th CPC Central Committee: "Green development is the underlying color of high-quality development, and new quality productive forces are themselves green productive forces."

General Secretary Xi Jinping's important exposition profoundly clarifies the intrinsic connection between new quality productive forces and green productive forces, and provides scientific guidance for accelerating the green transformation of development modes and empowering high-quality development with new quality productive forces.

China Railway Construction has taken cultivating new quality productive forces as the intrinsic requirement and important focus for the enterprise to promote high-quality development, with scientific and technological innovation as the main lever and serving the nation's strategic needs as the orientation. It has formulated five major directions for cultivating new quality productive forces, including "retrofitting existing buildings based on zero-carbon technology," and continues to explore and improve the "China Railway Construction development model," deeply integrating itself into the entire process of cultivating new quality productive forces and driving enterprise transformation and upgrading.

It is retrofitting, and even more a transformation

During this year's May Day holiday, tourists streamed to Dongyu Island in Qionghai, Hainan, where the retrofitted Boao Near-Zero Carbon Demonstration Zone took on a completely new look.

At the fountain plaza of the Boao Forum for Asia International Conference Center, two rows of green flower-shaped wind turbines bloom in the wind. These are currently the wind turbines with the lowest start-up speed in the world, requiring only a wind speed of 1.2 meters per second to start, and can achieve 24-hour all-weather continuous power generation.

In addition, the buildings on the island, after 100% electrification retrofitting, have achieved zero fossil energy use; the updated magnetic levitation variable-frequency centrifugal chillers feature lower noise, longer service life and higher working efficiency, with energy efficiency improved by more than 20%; the "photovoltaic-storage-direct current-flexible electricity" distribution system, integrating photovoltaic power generation, energy storage, DC distribution and flexible electricity use, has increased power supply capacity by a substantial 30%.

Boao Forum for Asia News Center

What is "near-zero carbon"? It means that the annual net total of greenhouse gases in a certain area continues to decrease and gradually approaches zero. "To achieve 'near-zero carbon,' the key is to do a good job of addition and subtraction," said Yuan Lei, project manager of China Railway Construction, who was responsible for the retrofitting construction.

As the country's ** "zero-energy" existing building retrofitting project, as far as the eye can see, the walls, roofs and floors of the Boao Forum for Asia News Center are all equipped with "black technologies"—for example, photovoltaic louvers that automatically adjust their tilt angle according to the angle of sunlight, with a photoelectric conversion efficiency of 21%; rooftop photovoltaic panels; and photovoltaic floor tiles that can withstand a load pressure of 3 tons per square meter, among others. Here, light resources are utilized to the maximum extent.

Doing only addition is not enough. In the lobby of the Boao Forum Hotel, Yuan Lei's team created a glass curtain wall that can "breathe." The combination of photovoltaic glass + louvers + electric window ventilation can reduce the lobby's air-conditioning electricity consumption by about 20% each year.

Data shows that the demonstration zone can produce about 32 million kWh of green electricity annually, which not only meets the zone's annual electricity demand of about 17 million kWh but also allows surplus electricity to be fed into the grid, with an estimated annual reserve of about 7,720 tons of negative carbon.

The Boao Near-Zero Carbon Demonstration Zone was therefore awarded the ** "Zero-Carbon Area Operation Certification" label issued in China by the German Energy Agency (dena). It was also selected as a typical urban renewal case by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and a typical low-carbon transformation case by the National Energy Administration, and was awarded the title of Excellent Demonstration Project by the National Comprehensive Smart Energy Conference.

It is technology, and even more industry

In the hot and humid Hainan, how can indoor spaces be kept dry while saving energy and reducing consumption? The solution provided by China Railway Construction is a smart energy management and control platform.

"When it detects that air quality, temperature and humidity do not meet standards, the system will automatically start the fresh air units and air-conditioning chillers, and dynamically adjust air conditioning and lighting according to the number of people in the building space and the outdoor light intensity," said Ma Huaixu, electrical engineer of the demonstration zone retrofitting project. Under the coordinated command of the "smart brain," the annual carbon emissions of the Boao Near-Zero Carbon Demonstration Zone have been reduced by more than 90% compared with before retrofitting.

Moreover, China Railway Construction has summarized ten major zero-carbon technologies, including green and low-carbon building materials, renewable energy and energy storage, and green smart lighting. It has jointly established a Carbon Neutrality Research Institute with units such as COSCO Shipping, and, relying on the "China Railway Core" brand, continues to deepen its presence in the high-end electromechanical market. Over four years, they have successively won bids for 112 projects, including the permanent venue of the Nansha International Financial Forum and Terminal 3 of Lanzhou Zhongchuan International Airport, with contract amounts totaling 12.95 billion yuan.

In recent years, China Railway Construction has clearly defined its transformation and upgrading approach of "taking scientific and technological innovation and business innovation as core competitiveness to drive sustainable development of the enterprise," and has gradually explored a development path of "scientizing science and technology, productizing technology, and industrializing products."

The prefabricated machine room technology of the Electromechanical Company alone has been applied in the construction of large and medium-sized high-end electromechanical refrigeration and heat exchange machine rooms in more than 50 projects across the country, with a total prefabricated pipeline length of nearly 20,000 meters, saving 50% of the construction period compared with traditional construction methods.

First application of aluminum formwork system technology for basement structures

In the past, traditional wooden formwork could only be used for basement structure construction in building projects. Now, the aluminum formwork system technology for basement structures has been applied for the first time in the Tsinghua University Tongzhou Financial Development and Talent Training Base project. "After formwork removal, the concrete surface achieves a fair-faced architectural concrete effect. More importantly, the aluminum formwork can be reused more than 200 times, greatly saving costs," said Zhao Xiangyang, chief engineer of the project.

Before 2016, faced with 100,000 square meters of idle all-steel large formwork, China Railway Construction Technology Company clung to a "heavy asset" management model and struggled to develop. In 2017, the company innovatively introduced aluminum formwork, adopted an OEM production model and a platform-based operating model of "supporting leasing with sales and combining leasing and sales," and turned small aluminum formwork into one big business deal after another. In just three years, the company established six aluminum alloy formwork factories and two aluminum profile production bases across the country, with an annual production capacity of 3.35 million square meters, ranking among the top three in the country by scale.

In April this year, China Railway Construction's first overseas aluminum formwork supply was successfully delivered for the A1 tender section project in Zone A of Macau New Urban Reclamation Area.

It is a cause, and even more a responsibility

Wang Kuan has calculated that, after applying the visual intelligent air-conditioning integrated control system, Beijing Chaoyang Railway Station can save 17% of comprehensive energy consumption, saving 21,800 kWh of electricity per day—enough to meet the normal electricity use of a family of three for nine years.

The machine vision-based indoor environmental control system has now undergone six upgrades and iterations, spawning products such as the binocular 3.0 version, the panoramic vision 5.0 version and the infrared version to meet different market demands, and was successfully included in the Beijing Recommended Catalog of Energy-Saving Technology Products. This entire system was developed by Dr. Wang Kuan, who also holds another identity—director of the Energy Conservation and Environmental Protection Research Institute of the China Railway Construction Engineering Research Institute. Wang Kuan believes that green and low-carbon development is becoming the consensus of more and more people, and people's demand for a better life is the driving force of technological innovation. Since the institute was established in 2019, his team has led or participated in the compilation of more than 30 technical standards related to green and low-carbon technologies and applied for more than 500 patents in the green environmental protection field.

Whether more energy-saving and environmentally friendly technologies can be provided is not only a need for enterprises to cope with fierce market competition but also an inevitable choice for fully giving play to the "three roles."

Inductive smart skylights at Xiamen North Railway Station

In Xiamen, Fujian, the transfer center of Xiamen North Railway Station adopts more intelligent inductive smart skylights. Their biggest highlight is the ability to customize and adjust the opening angle and time of the skylights and the coverage area of the curtains. "According to estimates, this can save nearly 40 days of ventilation system operation each year, equivalent to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 14 tons," introduced Pan Fengtan, person in charge of skylight construction.

In Haikou, Hainan, the urban renewal project in the Boya area has reduced formwork usage by about 90% and construction waste by nearly 40%, and shortened the average construction speed from 5.5 days per floor in the past to 4.5 days per floor now. All this is attributed to the application of the prefabricated IRF system and PK3 composite slabs independently designed and developed by them.

The National Key R&D Program green passenger station demonstration project and new benchmark for smart passenger stations, Asia's *** green cargo airport, PGPR in-situ ecological integrated restoration, smart elevator operation and maintenance management... Environmental protection stories are unfolding in projects in places such as Beijing's sub-center and Guangzhou's Nansha.