What is the Green Performance of Civil Buildings? - An Empirical Study on China’s Double-Certified Green Building Projects

Abstract

In the course of China's rapid economic development, huge amount of energy has been consumed. Therefore, the development of green buildings is of vital significance in reducing industrial energy consumption. This paper conducted an empirical study on the influencing factors of the green performance of civil buildings by adopting the generalized additive model. The results show that: (1) Government mandatory policies play a dominant role in green building development in China; (2) The role of local subsidies will be smaller and the best effect occurs when the subsidy is 2.2 USD/m² or higher than 5.9 USD/m²; (3) Air quality in different regions has an impact on green building performance; (4) When the construction scale exceeds 20,000 m², the greater the construction scale, the lower the building green performance. Finally, this paper proposed countermeasures to further improve the green building performances in China.