Xinhua, New York :
Being the world’s largest building construction market, China can offer many business opportunities for American companies specialized in energy efficiency, a U.S. industry expert has said.
“We believe there are great opportunities in China to design and construct new buildings that are very energy efficient,” said Clay Nesler, vice president of Global Sustainability and Industry Initiatives in Johnson Controls, in a recent interview with Xinhua.
A global company with energy efficiency solutions as one of its core businesses, Johnson Controls deems the Asia-Pacific region, particularly China, as its most important growth market, he said. The Wisconsin-based firm launched its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Shanghai last year.
“China is very critical and committed in the area of energy efficiency, particularly in buildings,” Nesler said, “it’s a market interest to many companies around the world, including the United States.”
Enterprises and universities from the world’s two largest economies have entered into close cooperation in this field under the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center Building Energy Efficiency Consortium (CERC-BEE), according to Nesler, who also served as chair of the Industrial Advisory Board of the consortium. In the coming decade, half of all the new buildings in the world would be built in China, said Nesler, leading to a big increase in building energy consumption.
On the other hand, China has had a proactive national plan in place for building energy efficiency, Nesler noted.
As part of its 13th Five-Year Plan for the 2016-2020 period, China set out binding targets that by 2020 at least 50 percent of all newly constructed buildings in urban areas should be certified green buildings, and more than 60 percent of the existing urban residential buildings should be upgraded to be energy efficient.
In Nesler’s view, this brings forth massive market potential for the industry of building energy efficiency. It was projected that the Chinese market volume for this industry could reach 230 billion yuan (36.3 billion U.S. dollars) by 2020.
