TIGblogs - Lorraine Siew WM

Amidst the talk over the legacy of Beijing's "Green Olympics," there has been surprisingly little attention paid to the environmental impact of the city's new buildings. It's especially surprising given that buildings have the largest footprint of any human activity, that China is building more buildings every year than anyone else, and that the government says it's serious about cutting buildings' energy consumption. I'm taking a look at some of the bigger projects as examples -- or counter-examples -- of sustainable design for China and elsewhere.

The Olympic Village may be the world's largest green building complex. The 160-acre site, containing 42 residential buildings ranging from six- to nine- stories, includes a combination of high-tech and low-tech solutions to radically reduce energy and raise efficiency, including insulation, energy efficient windows, solar and green roofs, and a heat exchange system that collects and re-uses rainwater for heating and cooling, saving energy by 40 percent over typical HVAC systems.

Developer Guo Ao, which claims the buildings use half the energy of similar buildings in Beijing, with so obsessed with getting a gold award (not unusual in China) that, one consultant told me, it did not want a coveted LEED rating if it were anything less. Last week, it was proudly announced: the US Green Building Council gave the complex a LEED gold certification, and the first such award outside of the US based on a pilot program designed for large-scale neighborhoods. And if our calculations are correct, at 370,000 sqm., it is also the largest LEED certified project yet.