POTENTIALS FOR AND BARRIERS TO BUILDING ENERGY CONSERVATION IN CHINA

China is distinct among developing countries in that it has significant heating loads over much of the country. Because nearly half of the urban residential buildings are located in climates colder than that of Washington state, the already large demand for space heating will skyrocket if the current building boom continues. Space heating energy use, excluding that for hotels and offices catering to foreigners, is constrained by mandated coal allocations resulting in partially heated buildings with indoor temperatures significantly below design conditions.
This underheating, to a significant extent, masks the energy savings obtained from more energy-efficient boilers and building designs. Even so, computer simulations show that such conservation strategies can reduce current energy use by 40 percent, while dramatically raising indoor temperatures. Economic calculations comparing energy savings with increased construction costs are skewed by the unmet heating loads as well as by government-subsidized coal prices that are below actual costs. From the perspective of building owners and managers, building energy conservation still is economically attractive in the cold Northeast– where the cost of conserved coal is half that of the subsidized coal price – but is difficult to justify in terms of economic payback in Beijing or Shanghai.