Mapping China: Urbanisation - 6 Urban Ecology: The Green Building Industry

Modern green building rating systems such as LEED were only introduced to China some 15 years ago. They soon became a success. Today LEED is a building standard widely applied in China. Besides that, China has developed its own rating system, called Three Stars.

China has a growing green building sector. The Three Star rating system has a similar mechanism to LEED’s. It rates buildings with a variety of ‘control items’ and ‘general items’ in different categories such as land savings and outdoor environments, energy savings, water savings, etc. In order to get labelled, the building has to be rated on each item and the score has to reach a certain level. Such a mechanism has created a green building industry that is very prominent and not only accessible to Chinese developers but also to global players.

Some critics claim that the LEED model has commercialised the idea of ‘green building’ and that the true value of a green lifestyle housed within the shell of the building has been lost. One interesting element that distinguishes the Three Star System from LEED is that the evaluation of a building can only be conducted after a property has been used for one year. Nevertheless, both systems encourage awareness in the sustainable building industry in China.