Government and other public-funded buildings in the city are
coming under increased scrutiny as authorities step up their
efforts to reach their ambitious energy saving goals.
Under an action plan issued earlier this month, by 2010, the
municipal government wants energy consumption in the country's
commercial and financial hub to be down 20 percent on the 2005
level.
Regular energy-use checks are now being carried out on
residential and office buildings and the results are being used as
part of the process to measure officials' performance.
One official from the Shanghai energy saving, monitoring and
audit center, which was set up in 1998, said: "Our work has
intensified in recent years, as energy saving is now high up on the
agenda of all levels of government."
The center recently completed an audit of more than 30 municipal
government buildings and is now carrying out inspections of
district-level government buildings.
Under the plan, some 180 billion sq m of new residential and
public buildings will have to be brought in line with the
energy-saving rules and a further 30 million old buildings will
have to be revamped by 2010, an official with the municipal urban
construction and transportation committee, said.
Yang Xiong, Shanghai's vice-major, said at a recent seminar on
energy saving in construction, said: "There is still plenty of room
to improve in the area of energy saving in our public
buildings."
Long Weiding, an expert on energy saving at Tongji University,
said: "Public-funded complexes, such as government buildings and
colleges, should be where the most strict energy-saving practices
are applied."
Residential and office buildings account for 18-20 percent of
the country's total energy consumption, Long said.
"Although this is relatively low compared to the amount used by
industry, the pace of growth is getting faster as the economy
booms," he said.
"There will be serious consequences if we don't pay enough
attention to energy-saving practices in the construction of new
buildings," he said.
The central government has set a target to reduce energy
consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent between 2006 and 2010. In
the first half of 2007, it was down 2.78 percent year on year.
(China Daily August 24, 2007)
