The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of the People’s Republic of China (MOHURD) published the National Calculation Standard for Building’s Carbon Emission (the Standard), which will come into force on December 1st, 2019. The standard aims to implement national policies on climate change, energy conservation, and emission reduction, standardize methods of calculating the building carbon emission, conserve resources, and protect the environment.
The standard applies to newly constructed, expanded and renovated civil construction and targets single buildings or groups of buildings. It can be applied during the designing phase or after the construction phase. The calculation process can be divided into three phases, namely (i) the construction and demolition phase, (ii) the production of the building materials and transportation phase, and (iii) the operation phase. The segmentation calculation results can be accumulated as the carbon offset amount of the building’s full life circle. Carbon emissions calculations should include the various types of greenhouse gases listed in the IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. The corresponding software has been developed based on the standard.
By applying the calculation methods of the standard to regulate the calculation of building carbon emission, people will pay more attention to energy-saving and carbon reduction during the building’s full life cycle in the design stage, while the construction and construction materials enterprises could enhance their awareness on carbon emission accounting, reporting, testing, and verification. This would provide technical support for future buildings to participate in carbon emissions trading, carbon tax, carbon allowances, carbon footprint, and international comparisons. Read more in CN
