China Green Buildings and Sustainable Development Seminar
8 July 2015 — Asia Clean Capital (“ACC”) and CBRE jointly host the 2015 China Green Building and Sustainable Development Seminar in Beijing. The seminar is an innovative interdisciplinary cooperation between the renewable Solar industry and the Real Estate industry aimed at promoting international Green Building standards in China’s real estate industry developing innovative measures in improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon emissions.

As environmental issues become increasingly prominent, the Chinese government has made great efforts in sustainable economic development, particularly in the real estate industry. At the same time, more and more people have begun to pay attention to the safety, comfort level, green standards, and energy efficiency of our living and working places. Many companies now include “Green Buildings” as one of their primary standards while choosing or building offices and manufacturing facilities and “Going Green” has become an important trend in the commercial real estate industry.

But the reality in China is, although the total construction area of the existing buildings is more than 40-billion square meters, the proportion of qualified green buildings is less than 1%. The cost and payback requirements are two main concerns that influence the owners’ decision whether to transform buildings into green buildings.

Mr. Thomas Lapham, CEO of ACC said during his forum speech, “ACC is unique in the Chinese market because we believe in building quality projects and taking care of them for many years into the future. We don’t believe in taking a quick profit at the beginning and then walking away. I credit this sincerity of spirit with helping ACC win projects with many of the world’s most respected multinational companies.”

“The cost of transformation into green building is not that high,” said Tang Hao, BD & Marketing Director of ACC. “Our customers do not need to pay anything but just need to provide the building and coordination, while ACC  will invest, design, construct, and operate the Solar system. By cooperating with ACC, our clients will reduce their capital costs and ongoing operation costs.”

According to the China Green Building White Paper CBRE released in the forum, there are 1,911 Chinese projects registered for LEED on the USBGC website, and there are 29 commercial buildings already awarded LEED certifications in China as of July 2015. Findings indicate that the average office rent of leadership in Energy & Environmental Design-certified space recorded a premium of between 1.5% and 25.7%. Research also suggested that LEED-certified projects were proven to be more resilient when the market goes down. “Solar PV technologies for Green Buildings have been successfully developed, building owners can reduce energy cost and carbon emissions as well as win high scores in Green Power and Carbon Offsets by adopting Solar PV technologies.” Said Mr. Zhen Tianbao, Director of Asset Servicing Business Unit of CBRE in North China,

“The cooperation between Asia Clean Capital and CBRE will leverage the industry’s most powerful technology and investment base to meet the commercial real estate needs of reducing the operating cost and establishing competitive advantages by going green” Said Ms. Huang Wei, the Managing Director of CBRE in Northern China in the forum.