Friday, June 26, 2009

More on MOHURD Three Star System

Today I'm attaching another slideshow on MOHURD's Three Star green building rating system. This PPT was presented by Song Ling, head of MOHURD's Green Building Label Management Office, at the recent Canadian Embassy green building summit.



On slide 5, Ms. Song introduces the Green Building Design Label (GBDL), which serves as a form of pre-certification. Developers can submit their design plans and earn a GBDL, which confirms that the building was designed to meet the Three Star rating system. The developers can then use this pre-certification to market the sustainability of the building to potential occupants or investors. It's unclear, however, what mechanisms require the developer to actually build to the design.

The presentation then dives much more deeply into the nuts and bolts of the system and talks specifically about who actually rates the buildings for compliance. For buildings seeking 1- or 2-star ratings, they go through a local certification process that is run by the many universities and research institutes shown on slide 8. For buildings seeking 3-star, the rating must be approved by the Beijing office of MOHURD.

Lastly, Ms. Song presents a list of the 10 green building projects certified in 2008. The list is all in Chinese obviously, but some of the more important buildings include #1, Shanghai Research Institute of Building Sciences office; #3, the Shanghai 2010 World Expo Center; and #7, Shenzhen's Vanke City. All of these buildings achieved the highest 3-star rating. Also of note is #6, the Bank of China headquarters in Beijing, which received a 1-star rating. As more leading Chinese companies build green buildings, it will begin to drive market transformation. I wouldn't expect ICBC or China Construction Bank to be far behind.