The office buildings near the East Third Ring Road in Beijing are brightly lit. Pan Zhiming's office is located in the midst of the brilliant lights, and the room is full of various information books. This 150 meter high glass building, with well dressed white-collar workers, is not far from the new CCTV building
"The distorted shape increases the surface area of the building, which means that the amount of steel and glass is increased. In terms of energy consumption of building materials alone, it is against the concept of energy conservation." Sitting in his office on the 17th floor, Pan Zhiming pointed to the CCTV building not far from the window, which was jokingly called "big underpants", and said rudely.
This area, known as the Central Business District, is full of buildings, luxury hotels, high-end office buildings and expensive shopping malls. It has become a new landmark for tourists to come to Beijing.
As a building energy efficiency researcher working in an environmental protection NGO, Pan Zhiming has little pride in being "tall" although he works in it. In his eyes, these skyscrapers wrapped in glass boxes mean huge energy consumption.
His views were echoed in the first edition of the Annual Development Research Report on Building Energy Efficiency in China. In the foreword of this book, Jiang Yi, director of the Building Energy Efficiency Research Center of Tsinghua University, wrote that a large number of super high-rise buildings, a large number of huge glass box buildings, and huge airports and stations have been newly built in recent years Public buildings New trends in. The power consumption per unit area of a large public building is equivalent to the energy consumption per unit area of 4 to 8 ordinary public buildings.
His large-scale public buildings refer to public buildings with a construction area of more than 20000 square meters. A series of data can support Jiang Yi's view. As early as 2007, the public information of the Energy Research Institute of the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development disclosed that although the area of large public buildings in China is less than 4% of the total urban building area, the energy consumption accounts for more than 20% of the total urban building energy consumption; The annual power consumption of government office buildings and large public buildings accounts for about 22% of the total power consumption of cities and towns in China, and the annual power consumption per square meter is 10-20 times that of ordinary residential buildings.
"With the development of China's economy and urbanization, the energy consumption of public buildings is bound to further increase." Jiang Yi said, "while large-scale public buildings are energy saving potential areas."
Having said everything, the other party still disagrees
Pan Zhiming once worked in the Science and Technology and Industrialization Development Center of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development. Previously, he would participate in the energy-saving publicity week every June, with printed pamphlets, and enter the community to popularize the concept of energy conservation and environmental protection to ordinary people. He found that many people were confused about the annual energy consumption of a shopping mall and an office building described in the brochure.
"Of course, some people will sigh at these astronomical energy consumption figures, but in fact, those long series of energy consumption figures are obviously not as powerful as their own bills for water, electricity and gas," he said.
In fact, just like people are consuming energy all the time, a building often consumes energy at an astonishing rate if it wants to maintain the normal operation of lighting, air conditioning, heating and other electrical equipment. According to statistics, the lighting and air conditioning systems of large public buildings in China consume tens of thousands of tons of standard coal every year, and the annual carbon emissions exceed 50000 tons. This means that the greenhouse effect that makes the world alert and the haze that makes Chinese people worried are inextricably linked with the energy consumption of these large-scale public buildings.
According to Jiang Yi's observation, with the rapid economic development, China's large-scale public buildings are growing rapidly. New large-scale commercial complexes, government offices, airports and railway stations are spreading from first tier cities to second and third tier cities. "In big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, the majority of new large-scale public buildings are commercial, while in local areas, such as some counties, the main large-scale public buildings are government office buildings.". Jiang Yi told reporters.
In fact, in 2005, a group of survey figures were frequently reported: the total annual power consumption of Chinese government agencies accounted for 5% of the total national consumption, the energy cost exceeded 80 billion yuan, and the energy consumption per unit building area exceeded 33% of the average level of the U.S. government agencies, the world's largest energy consumer. In March of the next year, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development released a Notice on Strengthening Energy Efficiency in Large Public Buildings and Government Office Buildings. This is the first time that relevant government departments have explicitly issued a policy notice on energy conservation of large public buildings.
Now, click on the official website of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development with a big red background, and through the local information section under building energy efficiency and technology, you can glimpse the achievements of energy-saving transformation of large-scale public buildings nationwide. "Hebei energy-saving buildings account for 40% of the total", "Shaanxi hundred point system evaluation smart city", "Wuxi takes four measures to promote the transformation of existing cities simultaneously", "Baoding will build a large area of high standard energy-saving housing"
But in Jiang Yi's view, some strange phenomena have also occurred frequently in the past decade. According to the annual investigation in various places during the writing of the white paper, Jiang Yi found that some places, even if not required for energy conservation, have to adopt these technologies by force in order to obtain financial subsidies from the government for technical measures such as solar photovoltaic, water source heat pump, ground source heat pump, etc. In other places, before the new large-scale public building scheme came out, it was required to do the energy conservation section, and a lot of unrealistic energy conservation schemes were proposed.
He recalled that Tsinghua University used some government office buildings in Beijing as a pilot project in the early days to do a project aimed at "helping the government build a set of energy-saving management tools", but it met with considerable resistance. "Some units were worried that this would let the superior government departments know that their energy consumption was high, and they would issue more strict management measures in the future." Jiang Yi, a student, Wang Xin, a doctor who participated in the project, said, "It took a lot of effort to persuade them. Sometimes it depends on fate. After all the words were said, the other party still disagreed."
It's easy to solve technical problems, but the key is power
Compared with Jiang Yi, Pan Zhiming now pays more attention to the research on energy efficiency of international large-scale public buildings. According to him, although the energy-saving policies of various countries are different, the common practices are basically to change energy-saving materials, use energy-saving equipment and reduce the energy consumption of the central air-conditioning system. "Technical things are easy to solve, but the key is power," he told reporters.
In April 2014, his Natural Resources Conservation Association released a report entitled "Leveraging the Building Energy Efficiency Market with Benchmarking and Publicity - Enlightenment from International Experience of New York and Other Cities". In the report, New York City in the United States has become a research object of key anatomy.
Before 2007, 80% of the greenhouse gases in this international metropolis came from the energy consumption of large public buildings, twice the national average. For this reason, the Mayor of New York personally proposed that the Mayor's Office of Long term Planning and Sustainable Development take the lead in solving this problem, and invited academic teams from New York University and the University of Pennsylvania as technical support.
The final reform idea is to rely on legislation to force energy efficiency benchmarking and publicity of large public buildings, so as to urge buildings with poor performance to be transformed and improve energy efficiency. According to the Report, the New York City Government will publish these information on the government website and publish reports on the benchmarking process and results every year in the first three years.
In a sense, the openness of data makes energy conservation a visible competition. At a dinner after a seminar, a participant from the United States told Pan Zhiming about the influence of data publicity. The person in charge told Pan Zhiming that they had investigated what factors were more conducive to the change of owners' energy-saving behavior in the form of questionnaires around the world. The results showed that even under different cultural backgrounds and different energy-saving policies, the influence of "energy consumption ranking among similar owners" exceeded the "return on capital"
"Compared with the benchmarking results of New York City in one year and two years, the average score of buildings participating in the evaluation has increased from 64 points to 67 points," Pan Zhiming's team wrote in the report released.
Pan Zhiming told reporters that in China, this reform idea has not yet entered the policy level, and the first difficulty is the disclosure of data. "Before 2000, few people could say clearly what the energy consumption of a building was. Until the academic community began to pay attention, the relevant departments began to pay attention and intervene," Jiang Yi recalled. In 2004, when the State planned to revise the Energy Conservation Law, Jiang Yi wrote to the relevant ministries and commissions twice, proposing to disclose the energy consumption data of large-scale public buildings.
Until 2007, this issue was finally put on the table. In the public documents of relevant departments, it is clearly proposed that the energy consumption statistics, energy audit, energy efficiency publicity and energy consumption quota system of large-scale public buildings will be established in 25 demonstration provinces and cities.
Everyone but God needs to talk about data
Seven years later, to Jiang Yi's disappointment, the scholar who proposed to disclose the energy consumption data of building operation has not yet obtained any energy consumption monitoring data himself. According to statistics, by the end of 2012, the energy consumption statistics of more than 40000 public buildings had been completed in China, but the monitoring data was still mysterious.
Jiang Yi remembers that he once applied to the relevant ministries and commissions that master and manage these data for disclosure. "First, he had to wait for the leaders' instructions, and then he said that it involved confidentiality and intellectual property rights. Anyway, he didn't get it after going around." On the phone, the 62 year old academician said angrily. Such "confidentiality" made him doubt the quality of monitoring data.
Not long ago, a media tried to inquire about the publicity through the local housing and construction departments, and they only got the energy consumption data of 114 large public buildings, except for "classified", "not open" and no reply.
In the opinion of Wang Xin, a doctoral candidate in HVAC at Tsinghua University, the main reason why the data has not been fully disclosed is that when the monitoring platform was built, he did not fully consider how to use the data. "The relevant systems and policies issued by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development are all about how to build the platform and what protocols and standards need to be met. No one cares about the use of the data, so whether the data can be used or not has not been tested in time." Wang Xin analyzed, "while those data obtained by spending a lot of money and effort are collected, they can only 'die' in the server."
"Scholars have no access to data, which not only makes it difficult to carry out a lot of research, but also makes it impossible for enterprises with more analytical ability and solutions in the market to participate." Pan Zhiming complained, "More importantly, it cannot play a role in forcing large-scale public buildings to save energy and reduce emissions through data disclosure."
In the report led by him, the New York City Government has actively communicated and coordinated with energy suppliers, industry associations and municipal departments on the issue of data disclosure. The New York City Government Building has also taken the lead in participating in the energy efficiency benchmarking and publicity of public buildings. Even the signature of New York Mayor Bloomberg on social network Twitter has been changed to: Everyone except God needs to speak with data.
In Pan Zhiming's view, because of the differences in national conditions, China cannot completely copy the way of New York, but at least we can think about how to open data, which can not only ensure that confidentiality is not disclosed, but also allow the society to play a supervisory role.
The researcher who once served in the government department told the reporter that now he is also suffering from the lack of data. However, he has mastered a "new skill" that makes people laugh and cry - to calculate the energy consumption data of large-scale public buildings by splitting the Statistical Yearbook released by the National Bureau of Statistics.
