Pace of Change - and "Greening"

This pair of photos - the first, taken on 8 September, and the second, on 25 October - requires no commentary. Beijing is most likely the largest construction site on the planet - at least it feels that way...

Even though the heavy trucks come at night, there is dust always and everywhere. There is a huge cadre of migrant construction workers that live in temporary containers directly on the building site. I actually had a VERY close encounter last week with a guy pushing a wooden cart: He came out from between two parked cars in the bike lane right in front of me, and we collided. Fortunately, I had one second to brake and, although I fell, nothing happened to people or property.

Much to my surprise, I noticed while riding home from Mandarin lessons last Wednesday that a prospective LEED certified building is going up just across the street from this site, the Beijing Century Prosper Center, in the heart of the Central Business District. The LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System™ is the US Green Building Council benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings (http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CategoryID=19). On our last mission, we toured the first LEED certified green building in China, the Ministry of Science & Technology. My Dartmouth classmate, Rob Watson, was instrumental in that project and in introducing green building to China (and the to the USA, for that matter).

Beijing’s successful bid for the 2008 Olympics will result in billions of dollars in new construction in the capital. China’s Ministry of Construction estimates that China will double its current building stock by 2020. Hopefully, China’s new building codes and standards, which aim to reduce energy consumption by 50% compared to buildings constructed in the 1980s, will begin to make a difference. Despite this impressive goal, the standards still fall short of international standards.