Analysis of national and local energy-efficiency design standards in the public building sector in China

The energy consumption in the building sector in China shares 25% of total energy consumption in the whole nation. The energy use in urban buildings in Chinese cities like Beijing and Shanghai share approximately 90% of whole energy consumption in buildings. Amongst these urban buildings, the energy use in public buildings is higher than other building sectors. So, the public building sector thus is an area of priority with regard to energy conservation and carbon reduction. China's Ministry of Construction has issued six energy-efficiency design standards to the building sector since 1995. The latest one is the design standards for energy efficiency in public buildings which aim to achieve 50% of the reduction of energy consumption in new and refurbished public buildings. Beijing and Shanghai governments have also issued their local energy saving standards for the public buildings with 65% and 50% of energy-saving goals. The main problems and weaknesses existing in the national and local standards in Beijing and Shanghai are assessed, and the reasons for producing the barriers to the implementation of national and two local standards are explored in this paper, they include: a) no explicit definitions of the base load energy consumption and the space conditioning energy uses are given, and only the energy savings from the base load energy consumption is considered in current standards; b) the benchmark of energy consumption selected is unreasonable and energy cuts from non technical measures are ignored; and c) the lack of effective supervision. Relevant solutions and suggestions to tackle these problems and weaknesses for the long-term energy conservation development in public buildings are discussed in this paper.

► The energy consumption in public buildings is higher than in other buildings in China.
► We assess the national and local energy-efficiency design standards.
► We find the space conditioning energy consumption is overlooked.
► We find the benchmark of energy consumption is unreasonable.
► Lack of effective supervision in the implementation process is another problem.