by Jbs040910 a3 — April 12, 2010—The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and China’s Green Building Council (CBGC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding recently in China, with officials from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and China’s Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MoHURD) in attendance.
USGBC called the signing a “historic moment signifying the beginning of a new era” for the two green building powerhouses, which will collaborate to promote green building and carbon emissions reductions in the building sector, including support for each other’s green building conferences and joint research and education on a series of issues of mutual interest.
China’s Green Building Council was established just two years ago, but has since quickly become an unstoppable driving force in the green building world, says USGBC, partially due to China’s rapid economic growth and urbanization, which make its building market the most attractive in the world, with 42 billion square meters of existing building stock along with 2 billion square meters of new buildings each year.
The associated energy consumption and carbon emissions make green building not an option but the only choice, according to USGBC. Although China has its own rating system, USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system has been popular in China because of the dominant business presence of a number of multinational companies who are very experienced with the program. USGBC estimates that China may even surpass the U.S. by sending the most LEED applications to USGBC within five years.
