Jiang Minglin, Counselor of the State Council and former Deputy Director of the State Bureau of Building Materials Industry, said on the 14th that compared with developed countries, China's building energy consumption is relatively high, and about 95% of existing buildings currently are high-energy-consumption buildings.

Jiang Minglin made the remarks at the "2014 17th China Beijing International High-Tech Expo China Energy Strategy Forum" held that day. He said China's energy consumption is divided into three major sectors, namely industrial energy consumption, building energy consumption and transportation energy consumption, of which building energy consumption accounts for 28%-30% of total energy consumption. In 2013, the country's total energy consumption was 3.76 billion tons of standard coal, while building energy consumption was nearly 1.1 billion tons of standard coal.

Jiang Minglin said China's building energy consumption level lags far behind that of developed countries. "Taking building heating as an example, China's primary energy consumption for central heating is about 20 kilograms of standard coal per square meter, double that of European countries at the same latitude or even higher latitudes, and those countries' central heating systems also include cooling, while ours do not," he said.

Jiang Minglin suggested that building energy efficiency should be an important part of China's energy-saving work, that the green building action plan should be further implemented, and that an inter-ministerial joint conference should be established including multiple government departments such as the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Energy Administration, the Ministry of Environmental Protection, and financial regulatory authorities. At the same time, supervision and inspection should be strengthened, especially for projects with large energy consumption. In addition, research and development of green building technologies should be further strengthened, including building planning, architectural design, energy-saving green building materials, energy-saving and high-efficiency electromechanical equipment, sewage treatment and utilization, and construction waste recycling and utilization.