The first China (Qingdao) "Green City" high-end seminar was successfully held

On the morning of July 23, the first China (Qingdao) "Green City" high-end seminar was successfully held in Fuxin Building. The seminar was sponsored by the Qingdao Municipal People's Government and undertaken by the Science and Technology and Industrialization Development Center of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and Qingdao Municipal Bureau of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. It aims to further consolidate the scientific methods and measures of multi-party forces to seek urban green and low-carbon development.

This seminar invited Li Xiaowen, the second-level inspector of the Policy Research Bureau of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, Liang Junqiang, deputy director of the Science and Technology and Industrialization Development Center of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and Mei Dewen, general manager of the Beijing Green Exchange, to conduct in-depth discussions on the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality in green cities and urban and rural construction. More than 300 people including leaders from more than 30 brother provinces and cities inside and outside the province, members of the Qingdao Green City Construction and Development Leading Group, comrades in charge of pilot areas and projects for green city construction and development, and representatives of related enterprises participated in the conference. 

Qingdao is the country's first and only pilot project for the development of green city construction. Since the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the People's Bank of China, and the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission approved in December last year to support Qingdao in launching a pilot green city construction and development, in accordance with the overall requirements of "improvement in half a year, results in one year, and experience in two years", Qingdao City has promoted the establishment of a mechanism to lay a solid foundation and seek long-term results. Since the approval of the pilot, Qingdao has issued an action plan, detailed the pilot work, and clarified the task route, focusing on the four major areas of green finance, green ecology, green construction, and green life, and promoted the pilot work to break the ground and develop in depth. Initial results have been achieved, and Qingdao’s “pilot” is gradually becoming a “bright spot”.

For more than half a year, Qingdao has insisted on advancing the pilot work as the "top leader" project, and established the Qingdao Green City Construction and Development Work Leading Group with the main leaders of the municipal government in charge and the main leaders of various districts, municipal governments, departments and related institutions as members, timely study and solve major problems in the pilot work. At the beginning of this year, Qingdao officially issued the "Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Pilot Program of Green City Construction and Development". The pilot work will be divided into 4 categories and 27 specific tasks. At the same time, this year's pilot action plan will be issued to formulate 30 specific work goals for the year, each with a clear timetable, road map, and task book."

At the implementation level, Qingdao grasps the three key points of “districts, platforms, and projects”, and strives to build a promotion pattern that combines point and surface and coordinated linkage. First, five pilot areas were identified, focusing on the layout of the green city construction and development test zone in the Shanghe Demonstration Zone in the core area around Jiaozhou Bay, the Qingdao International Cruise Green Port Pilot Zone, the West Coast New District Zero Carbon Pioneer Zone, the Sino-German Ecological Park Zero Carbon Park, and the Qingdao Olympic Sailing Center Zero Carbon Community. At present, the pilot work in each area has been fully rolled out. Secondly, with the help of platforms such as the Internet, big data, and urban information model (CIM) foundations, the level of intelligence in the pilot work will be improved. Finally, grasp the project carrier, cultivate a batch of green city construction benchmark projects represented by zero-carbon industrial parks, zero-carbon factories, and zero-carbon communities, and promote the integration and transformation of industry-university-research veteran degree. 

Green development requires capital support. Qingdao cooperates with financial institutions and business entities to "hand in hand" to play a "combination punch" supported by multiple models of green credit, green bonds, green funds, and green insurance. China’s first ultra-low energy building performance insurance policy, China’s first “carbon reduction insurance” building energy conservation insurance policy, the province’s first 10 million yuan “carbon neutral” loan, and the province’s first 500 million yuan “carbon neutral” bon... In the past six months or so, many innovative explorations in the field of green finance have become a prominent highlight of the pilot work of Qingdao's green city construction and development. As of the end of the first quarter of this year, the city's bank green loan balance reached 173.25 billion yuan.

At present, Qingdao’s newly-built civil buildings have achieved 100% implementation of green building standards. This year, 1.29 million square meters of star-rated green building signs have been added, and 2.268 million square meters of existing residential buildings have been renovated for energy-saving. The city has built a total of 63.39 million square meters of green buildings, and the area of energy-saving renovation of existing residential buildings is close to 40 million square meters.

"There is improvement in half a year, results in one year, and experience in two years", Qingdao has a long way to go in the construction and development of a green city. To promote the rapid progress of green city construction, it is necessary to establish a green development system with clear logic, effective and precise system. How to better carry out the development of green construction, give better play to the supporting role of green finance, build a model for the development of green construction in China's cities, and explore the road to market-oriented sustainable development are important topics of this seminar. At the conference site, experts, scholars, political and business representatives in the fields of urban planning and construction, green building, green finance, etc., jointly discussed the concept, method, content and path of green city construction and development, and provided suggestions for the transformation and development of future urban construction.