China crucial to global building industry's sustainable change

The revolution in the green building sector will open a $1.8 trillion global market opportunity by 2030, while China, as the world's largest construction market, can play a critical role in driving sustainable change across the global building industry, according to a report released by global consultancy Boston Consulting Group and World Economic Forum.

The report identifies 11 strategic transition levers across the entire value chain of buildings. These levers, when combined, could unlock over 80 percent of the sector's abatement potential.

"The sheer complexity of the building value chain requires upstream and downstream players to work together on enabling actions such as standard alignment and technology breakthroughs," said Yvonne Zhou, managing director and senior partner at BCG. "Only through this collaboration will the 11 levers be fully unlocked."

Zhou said AI plays a vital part in bolstering carbon reductions, and hopes China could seize the opportunities from green and low-carbon development and cutting-edge AI technology.

To realize this vision, the report indicated that several critical enabling factors need to be addressed. These include further policy on regulation and industry standards, data and advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, biomaterials, and financing and upskilling support.

The report said China, which is the largest building market in the world with more than half of the global production capacity for many building materials, has an important role in decarbonizing the building industry.

The green transition of China's building value chain will not only create value and new business opportunities for industry players in China, but could also help catalyze the development and adoption of green building products and services globally, it added.

"China is the world's largest market for building material production and consumption," said Wu Yong, president of the China Association of Building Energy Efficiency. "We must act quickly so that we can leverage China's sizeable contribution to greening the global building value chain."