China plans to invest billions of U.S. dollars to reduce energy consumption in buildings and is requiring construction companies to live up to their promises, according to the Ministry of Construction.

About 1.5 trillion yuan (180 billion U.S. dollars) will be spent on energy saving renovations of existing buildings up to the year 2020,Minister of Construction Qiu Baoxing said.

While new buildings in China are designed with energy conservation measures, barely half of them are actually built that way, according to official statistics.

The Ministry of Construction inspected over 600 construction projects around the country last year and ordered those that failed to comply with energy saving codes to make repairs so they meet the standard.

Construction companies that fail to follow energy saving codes in building design and construction will be punished, warned Qiu.

China will also evaluate the performance of officials based on whether they meet energy conservation goals.

According to official figures, by the end of 2006, 95.7 percent of construction projects had been designed in line with energy saving codes, but only 53.8 percent of them were built as the codes require.

If all the energy saving measures were implemented properly, China would save energy equivalent to 350 million tons of standard coal by 2020.

China also lags far behind energy conservation measures of other countries. In Beijing it takes 22.4 kg of coal to heat a square meter of floor space, while in Germany is takes less than nine kg of coal.

"Conservative estimates show that new energy efficient buildings built in 2006 in urban China helped save seven million tons of standard coal annually," said Qiu.

In urban areas, the floor area of buildings supplied with solar energy-generated light and heat amounted to 230 million square meters.

China has built 1.06 billion square meters of energy efficient buildings, but the figure accounts for only seven percent of the total floor space of existing buildings in urban China.

A compulsory energy-saving test system will be applied to newly-built government buildings and large public buildings.

The government is also working on preferential policies such as financial subsidies and tax breaks to encourage the construction of energy-saving buildings.

Source: Xinhua