Footing the Bill

Some people worry that anything connected to the green idea, like green vegetables, comes with at a high price. Is it true with green construction? The short answer is not necessarily. China has some experience with costing over the long term as well as the short term: the eco-friendly office building is only part of China's exemplary eco-construction try-outs. Others have included a 200-sq-m single house and a 391.5-sq.-m apartment building.

According to Sun Daming, executive director of the Shanghai Green and Ecological Building Research Center affiliated to the China Academy of Building Research, a green building usually adopts necessary energy-saving technology and equipment as required by the particular needs and energy targets of the project. A popular green building is not necessarily a showcase of all the state-of-the-art technologies at once, so high costs need not be entailed.

Sun believes that with the advancement of technology and growth in supporting policies, the development of green construction will have a welcoming environment and the cost for going green will also drop. According to 2008 investigations, a construction that met the state's one-star green standards cost an extra RMB 100 per square meter. The unit's cost rose by RMB 250-270 for compliance with two-star standards, and RMB 350-450 for being built to three-star standards. Today this has been lowered to RMB 50, 150 and 250 respectively.

Driving the shift is undoubtedly the government's policy support for the utilization of renewable energy. Solar power, for example, has become mandatory for new housing projects in many areas. Normally application of renewable energy contributes to 40 percent of the extra spending on green buildings. When the state rules this to become the code for all buildings, the cost disparity between green and conventional buildings will narrow, deviating little from standard costs.