Kevin Mo's Blog: Health and the Environment

Citius, Altius, Fortius: China to pursue world’s tallest green building

2009-10-10T04:15:53Z

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games have become history, but the Olympic spirit of "Citius, Altius, Fortius" appears to have been instilled into China's building industry. The 2009 Green Building and Energy Efficiency International Conference hosted by McGraw-Hill Construction in Shanghai in August showed that more Chinese developers embrace the concept of green buildings, and many would use "green" to justify taller and bigger construction plans. Almost all the development projects presented at the conference were exceptionally jumbo-sized buildings or communities.

Although energy efficiency and GHG emissions reductions are of equal importance in the central government policies, the building industry seldom touches upon the issue of climate change as evidenced in the conference. My presentation, Building Solutions to Climate Change, was the only one focusing on how the building sector can contribute to climate change mitigation and adaptation.

[A rendering picture of upcoming Shanghai Center (632 meters), adjacent to China's current two tallest buildings: Shanghai World Financial Center (492 meters) and Jin Mao Tower (421 meters). The famous Oriental Pearl TV Tower (468 meters) is in the background]

One eye-catching presentation previewed China's next tallest building, the 632-meter (2,073 feet) Shanghai Center featuring 30,000 square meters (323,000 square feet) of offices, shops, hotels, and recreational facilities, with a price tag of more than $2 billion U.S. dollars. The skyscraper is already under construction and will eclipse China's current tallest building, the 492-meter (1,624 feet) Shanghai World Financial Center, in 2014. What amazed the audience was that these two highrises and another giant, the 421-meter Jin Mao Tower, are all located in the same district: the Lujiazui Financial and Trade Zone in Shanghai. The three giants are close to one another and are commonly termed "the three big brothers" in China's priciest area, which is sure to become Shanghai's new landmark.

Let's put everything into perspective. The 83.8-meter Shanghai Park Hotel had been the tallest building in Shanghai for half a decade since it was built in 1934. It was rumored--and testified by this WSJ article--that young I.M.Pei was so awed by the height of the hotel at first sight that he quitted Saint John's University in Shanghai and went to the U.S.--first UPenn and then MIT--to study architecture. In 1978, China committed to the open door policy. Just five years later, in 1983, the Shanghai Hotel passed the Park Hotel by a height of 91.5 meter, which officially kicked off a race for the highest. In 1999, Jin Mao Tower became China's tallest building. In 2008, Shanghai World Financial Center grabbed the title.

[The Shanghai Park Hotel was once known as "the tallest building in the Far East"]

Due to its booming economy, China has been known as "an architects' heaven" and has attracted almost every renowned international architectural firm, whose wildest and sexiest dreams can come true here. Interestingly enough, the three big brothers were all designed by American firms: the Shanghai World Financial Center by KPF, the Jin Mao Building by SOM, and the Shanghai Center by Gensler.

The biggest selling point for China's next tallest building is that it aims to be the world's tallest green building (though not the world's tallest building). The developer is probably aware of the controversial issues around this project. Some have criticized that the Financial Zone is already too crowded, and that a 632-meter giant would inevitably put too much strain on the area's already stressed transit systems and infrastructure. Some have argued that Shanghai has fallen over two meters during the past four decades, and that this upcoming giant may expedite the ground-sinking phenomenon.

To remove these "original sins", the developer's presentation revealed the Shanghai Center's objective of pursuing LEED-Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) as well as Three-Star certification from China's Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD). Implementation strategies to obtaining the two certifications were also discussed. For such an extraordinary skyscraper, receiving either certification would be quite an accomplishment, and receiving both would be, to many, nearly a mission impossible. But I wouldn't doubt the Shanghai Center's potential to achieve this goal: its green building consulting team consists of Chinese experts who participated in writing the Chinese Green Building Standard, and Gensler itself received a USGBC's Leadership Award in 2005 and is quite knowledgeable about the LEED criteria.

Two claims in the presentation caught my attention: that "skyscrapers are the choice of future city development" and that the project aims to "provide and demonstrate best practices for green skyscrapers." While North American and European countries are not so enthusiastic about skyscrapers any more, Asian countries are still fascinated with them. Currently there is only one 600-plus-meter skyscraper in the world (the Burj Dubai in UAE, 818 meters). But according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, the world's Tallest 10 in 2020 (including Burj Dubai and Shanghai Center) will all be over 600 meters, and eight will be in Asia and three will be over 1,000 meters. Therefore, Shanghai Center could lose its tallest-green-building crown to others soon after earning it.

According to a Caijing article, the project's environment impact report only briefly discussed air, water, noise and light pollution. The entire report has never been open for public comments, and only the introduction part was posted online for a short period of time. Will the two popular green certifications in China environmentally condone--or should we say legitimate--such an extraordinary development in this special area? A further relevant question: were the two green building standards meant to certify such a super-tall building? Even a scientific law has its domain and constraints. In my previous blog, In Green We Build, I expressed my concern that many developers would use green certification to get green lights from the administration-a potential greenwashing.

Mr. Qingwei Kong, Chairman of the Shanghai Center Construction Development Co. Ltd, provided another perspective: during the economic downturn, the project would "simulate domestic market demand and lessen economic volatility."

Beijing's High-Polluting Vehicle Phase-Out Plan Seems to be Working

2009-06-19T06:53:22Z

Air quality of Beijing was a focal point both before and during the Olympic Games. After the Olympics, the topic faded out of the media, but Beijing is still working hard to keep the sky blue. According to the Beijing Environment Protection Bureau, from January 1, 2009 to June 9, 2009, 81 percent of the days achieved an air quality of Grade II or better. As a matter of fact, Beijing residents are enjoying the best air quality for the same period of time since year 2000, partly thanks to the city's high-polluting vehicle phase-out plan.

The Ministry of Environment Protection has categorized air quality into five grades. Grade I is the best, with an Air Pollutant Index (API) of less than 50, and Grade II is good, with an index ranging from 51 to 100. High-polluting vehicles are a major source of air pollutants in Beijing. By the end of 2008, the 353,800 yellow-mark cars accounted for only 10 percent of the total cars in Beijing, but emitted half of the total pollutants by vehicles in Beijing.

In addition to the yellow label vehicle phase-out incentives, Beijing has provided discount car loans of up to two years to public service driving contractors who purchase green label cars in 2009, based on the purchase date.

Jan. 1 to June 30, 2009: 2-year discount car loan
Jul. 1 to Sept. 30, 2009: 1.5-year discount car loan
Oct. 1 to Dec. 31, 2009: 1-year discount car loan

The Beijing Transportation Bureau even gave an example of how a car owner could best benefit from the campaign. If a driving contractor purchased his heavy truck for 300,000 yuan ($43,920) in 2004 and traded in it by June 30, 2009, he would receive 15,000 yuan ($2,196). He would save additional 36,000 yuan ($5,270) on a car loan if he purchased a green-label car of a similar model. The savings would total 51,000 yuan ($7,460), more than one-sixth of the car's value.

Still, the incentive seems unattractive to most owners. It is estimated that to date (June 9, 2009), Beijing has only disbursed incentives to 31,871 yellow-label vehicle owners, close to 10 percent of the stock. But most yellow-label cars have disappeared. It's the "forbidden zone" that makes the difference. Most owners choose to sell their yellow-label cars to secondhand car dealerships, which then sell the cars to the neighboring cities that have less stringent emission regulations. That is, most high-polluting cars are not traded in, but spread around the city.

In addition to the stringent regulations, Beijing continues to add cleaner buses to its public transportation system. Beijing owns 4,000 more natural gas buses than any other city in the world, and will continue to increase that number to 5,000 by 2012.

Beijing also has set a rule that forces each car off the street for one weekday. For example, if its license number ends in 1 or 6, a car can't be on the street on Monday; this keeps 20 percent of cars at home on weekdays. But some would argue that rich people can buy a second car just for use during that one weekday. Beijing has also moved most high-polluting industries out of the area and has increased its forest coverage to 36.5 percent.

A couple of days ago, the Beijing Transportation Commission released a green public transportation initiative for 2009-2015. Some highlights are as follows:

By 2015, Beijing's daily public transportation (buses and subways) capacity will be 25 million passenger-trips, including 15 million by bus and 10 million by subway.
45 percent of passenger-trips in the metro area will be by public transportation.
The city will establish approximately 1,000 bicycle-rental stations, with a total of 50,000 bicycles available for rent. Walk-only and bicycle-only street lanes will be opened across the metro area.
The public-transportation-only lane will be 450 kilometers long.
90 percent of public transportation passengers in the metro area will walk less than 500 meters to the nearest station.

Although the API shows better air quality of Beijing, it should be noted that the API currently only measures the concentration of sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), suspended particulates (PM10), carbon monoxide (CO) and ozone (O3). It was reported that China is considering including suspended particulates (PM2.5), which is more damaging to the respiratory system than PM10, in the API.

My colleague Alex Wang and his team just released a milestone pollution index, PITI (Pollution Information Transparency Index), which monitors how 113 Chinese cities perform in terms of disclosure of pollution information.