By Yao Xueqing, Bai Guangdi, People’s Daily
Jiangsu province in east China has made ceaseless efforts to foster green production and promote green lifestyles over recent years, integrating a green philosophy into everything from architecture to transportation and production.
By the Yangtze River in the Jiangbei New Area of Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, there is a building that looks like a giant wooden house that covers 2,400 square meters. The wooden structure, which looks cozy and trendy, has a top covered by large solar panels. It’s cool inside on hot summer days, even without the air conditioning.
The “wooden house” is the service center of a residential complex for talents working in the city. The biggest highlight of the structure is that it is self-sufficient in energy.
Zhu Kan, deputy director of the green architecture center of Nanjing Yangtze River Urban Architectural Design Co., Ltd., the designer of the “wooden house,” told People’s Daily that the structure features ultra-low energy consumption.
It was built with thermal-insulation wood materials, and in the wall cavity, there is fire- and heat-resistant stone wool boards that keep the structure cool in the summer and warm in the winter, Zhu said.
According to estimation, the energy demand of the service center is only about 70 percent of that of similar buildings, which means that the structure can save 316,000 kWh of electricity and 1,600 tons of water on an annual basis, equivalent to reducing 274.4 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
Besides saving energy, the service center is also an energy supplier. The 864 solar panels span 1,800 square meters on the top of the building, making a microgrid that boasts a total installed capacity of 345 kW and an annual generation capacity of 270,000 kWh. The microgrid powers not only the building itself but also the charging poles in the residential complex. The facility’s clean electricity each year can charge more than 5,000 electric vehicles.
“It’s a prefabricated building, and the construction of it was like building blocks. Parts needed were fabricated in factories and then transported to the site for assembly,” said Zhu, adding that it was efficient and reduced environmental pollution.
It is learned that Jiangsu province has built similar structures featuring ultra-low energy consumption. Constructed in green and low-carbon ways, they boast higher energy utilization efficiency and lower carbon emissions.
At 8:00 am on a Monday, when traffic was the busiest of the day, Chen Taizhou, bus driver of Line 1 of Jiangsu’s Wuxi, drove a bus from Wuxi’s central bus station to the destination Yuantouzhu, a local scenic tourist region.
“It was all jammed in the peak hours a few years ago, and I had to wait at traffic lights at almost every crossroads. Passengers always complained about it,” said Chen, referring to a 5-kilometer section that crosses ten intersections in the downtown.
However, things have changed since last September. Chen found that he saw more green and fewer red lights when driving through the section, and the cycle length of red lights became shorter.
The change came from Wuxi’s innovative attempt to promote green transportation and public transit with the Internet of Things (IoT) technology.
Chen’s bus is powered by new energy and looks very tech-ish. On top of it, there are two antennas, which help realize precise vehicle positioning with the differential positioning technology. Besides, the bus is also equipped with an intelligent gateway that transmits real-time data about the vehicle, including speed, mileage, and positioning information.
Three bus routes in the city now enjoy transit signal priority (TSP) at some 30 crossroads thanks to the application of the Internet of Vehicles, said an official with the municipal bureau of industry and information office of Wuxi.
According to the official, these buses now make 1.03 fewer stops during a single trip, and their average waiting time at each crossroads has been reduced by 54 seconds or 36.1 percent.
Apart from Wuxi, other cities in Jiangsu province also launched TSP services and green bus routes, including Suzhou and Suqian. With better experiences, green public transport is seeing more and more passengers.
In a factory of Globe Group in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, one of the leading Chinese manufacturers of new energy gardening machinery, solar panels were seen on the top of workshop buildings. The factory also employs clean production techniques besides the solar power facility. It has established a resource recycling mechanism and is constantly optimizing energy consumption structure for better green development.
Senior vice president of the company Zhuang Jianqing told People’s Daily that using government subsidies, the company launched a green transition for its production, building two unmanned workshops, updating 50 automated production lines, and introducing 240 robots. Besides it has also established a circulating water treatment system. Thanks to these efforts, the factory has expanded its capacity by four times while being environmentally friendly.
Over recent years, Jiangsu province has accelerated the green transition of traditional industries and increased its support for environmental protection, clean production, and green service industries, building a batch of green high-tech factories featuring low energy consumption and pollution.
