China Act on the Energy Efficiency of Civil Buildings (2008): A decade review

Abstract

China has launched the energy efficiency project (EEP) for its civil building sector beginning in the mid-1980s; however, its implementation has not been effective. To better promote the EEP for the Chinese civil building sector, the Chinese government issued the China Act on the Energy Efficiency of Civil Buildings in 2008. This is the first paper to present a review of this act's implementation over the past decade. Based on China Database of Building Energy Consumption and Carbon Emissions and official documents, the achievements of this act are assessed by examining a variety of indicators. The success of the act can be attributed to the following factors: 1) a strong and sustained government commitment to top policies of building energy efficiency (BEE); 2) extensive efforts to apply the BEE standards to newly built civil buildings; 3) various incentive schemes involving energy efficiency retrofitting for existing civil buildings; 4) the increasing adoption of renewable energy to the civil building sector and of systems and platforms of energy efficiency supervision to commercial buildings; and 5) the rapid development of green buildings. Nevertheless, the revised act must address several challenges in the upcoming phase. These challenges mainly include the following: 1) the “double-control” strategy for the civil building sector; 2) the substantial development of the EEP in rural China; 3) the further development of green buildings for the low-carbon civil buildings; 4) the improvement of official statistical data systems on energy consumption and carbon emissions for civil buildings; and 5) building industrialization and informatization. It's expected that our efforts as constituting significant guidance for evaluating the EEP in the Chinese civil building sector, and the efforts will also be treated as an example for other developing countries to evaluate and revise their BEE acts.