National housing body vows more green measures

The country's top housing authority will make intensified efforts to promote green, low-carbon buildings as the country forges ahead with its ambitious targets of going carbon neutral, officials said. 

They made the remarks at a news conference organized by the State Council Information Office on Monday, following the publishing of a guideline from the country's central authorities on urban and rural green development. 

Unveiled by the general offices of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, the country's Cabinet, on Thursday, the document vowed to make urban and rural development green in a comprehensive manner by 2035.

By that time, with the living environment further improved, the country will see the construction sector's capability in controlling carbon emissions greatly lifted. Both institutional and governing capacity in urban and rural development will be essentially "modernized", according to the document.

To realize the targets, the country aims to establish the necessary institutional mechanisms and policy systems for green urban and rural development by 2025, it said. Green production and life styles will be widely adopted by then. 

Zhang Xiaohong, vice-minister of housing and urban-rural development, said the construction sector is a major contributor to carbon emissions in China and its contribution is expected to increase with China's urbanization process and the improvement of people's livelihood. 

He said the guideline has included a series of measures to address the outstanding problems of constructing, consuming and emitting all in large scales in the sector. 

To reform urban and rural development mode, Zhang said the guideline includes an action plan to integrate the country's ambitious climate goals-peaking carbon dioxide emissions peak before 2030 and realizing carbon neutrality before 2060-into the construction sector. 

The guideline said stepped-up measures will be taken to make old buildings more low-carbon and green as the country makes consistent efforts to renovate aging urban residential communities. 

Preferential policies will be introduced to propel scale development of high-quality green buildings, the document continued. Efforts will be made to develop buildings with low and near-zero energy consumption, as well as those with zero carbon emissions.