EC-Link Introduces Latest European Solutions to Chinese cities for Green Building Development
A green building workshop was held by the Europe-China Eco Cities Link project (EC Link) in cooperation with southern China’s Guilin City from the 28th to the 29th of May. The Training day was intended to be the first of a series of more specific local events to be organized in Guilin within the framework of the World Environment Day to be celebrated on June 5th.
The event was designed to tailor to the specific needs of Guilin city, one of EC-Link’s pilot cities，which include Weihai, Changzhou, Qingdao, Zhuzhou, Xixian New Area, Hefei and Liuzhou.
Guilin, with its monsoon-influenced humid subtropical climate, which similarly affects nearly 20 percent of China’s territorial area and about one third of its population, acts as a microcosm for the initiative. The city has been looking into more cost effective ways to promote green buildings.
“This initiative reflects EC Link’s continuous efforts to build a EU-SINO platform of low carbon and ecological city development. The major objective of the meeting is to identify common interests and cooperative opportunities between Chinese cities and their European counterparts in the green building development. ”said Andrea Claser, team leader of the EC-Link project, a EU-funded project which was launched in 2014.
Attending the meeting were more than 300 officials, professionals, experts and entrepreneurs from China and European countries, including the vice- mayor of Guilin Municipality, the chief engineer of Guangxi Provincial HURD.
As a result of their discussions on green building policies, technologies, market mechanisms and good local practices, a key research paper on green building will be worked out by both sides. It will address new techniques and their implementation in specific climates.
Thanks to the information gleaned from the pilot scheme in Guilin, and the fruitful discussion among all participants, it was noted the training experience could be introduced into other parts of the country. Both the European and Chinese sides agreed to put more project resources to help pilot cities learn from European cities’ noteworthy green building technologies, know-how and good practices. Thus, they can formulate more effective green building development strategies to fit their specific climate features.
EC-Link Project and Guilin Municipality will continue their dialogue in order to strengthen their on-going collaboration in order to support the sustainable urban development of the Municipality.
More information is available on the initiative at http://eclink.org/en/
