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		Rationale
		Within the overall world economy the building sector provides one of the greatest consumption area, with more that one third of the total consumption. As a building lifetimes are typically more than 50 years, there is a very strong incentive to reduce the energy consumption at all stages, from conception to operation and ultimately destruction & recycling. In this context, China has become the world's largest construction market, with half the World's new buildings built around the globe each year, adding approximately 2 billion square meters of floor space annually. The nation spends up to 45 percent of its total energy on manufacturing and transporting building materials, constructing homes and offices, and heating and cooling structures. If this rate of construction continues, i.e. doubling the area of existing buildings by 2020, it will be nearly impossible for China to provide enough energy to operate all of these structures properly, Xinhua News reports. (Source: Worldwatch Institute) China's largest buildings currently cover nearly 43 billion square meters of floor space, yet only 4 percent of them have adopted energy-efficiency measures, primarily for heating. The total bill for retrofitting these structures is estimated to be at least 1.5 trillion yuan (US$193 billion), according to Qiu Baoxing, vice minister of the Ministry of Construction. But Qiu also notes that retrofitting buildings with energy-efficient technologies can save China at least 150 million tons of standard coal annually as well as some 600 billion yuan (US$77 billion) in costs, equivalent to the electricity generated by four Three Gorges Dam projects, People's Daily reported. Innovation in constructing energy-saving buildings is crucial to China's sustainable development, foreign and domestic energy experts said on Friday. Experts came to the consensus at the international forum on "Innovation for Sustainable Development" at Shanghai Tongji University. Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and United Nations' Environment Program (UNEP) Executive Director, said Asian countries especially China are growing at a fast and unprecedented scale. Steiner said China's building space will increase by 2 billion square meters every year, and that more energy efficient building solutions were needed, as a UNEP report revealed. "A lot of 'urban dreams' in the 20th century are proven to be 'urban traps' now, although many of such dreams were implemented into reality out of the best intention from the urban policy makers and architects," Steiner said. Steiner said Chinese architects play an important role in sustainable growth, and that they need to avoid falling into those "urban traps". Wan Gang, minister of science and technology and president of Tongji University, said China faces the pressure of a huge population and limited resources, and needs innovative technological talent to find solutions. The Euro-China Energy-Efficient Buildings Forum 2007 aims at exploring existing and novel approaches for sustainable technologies in building in a fast growing economy. The problem is highly complex and has many components including architectural, technical, financial, regulatory, social etc. It is the aim of this forum to bring together people whose decisions impact the energy consumption during the whole lifecycle of buildings in order to find solutions in a concerted manner.

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