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Urban Renewal and Green Finance Practice Forum

Oct 22-2025   



Keynote Addresses

Liang Hao, Senior Research Fellow at the Science and Technology Development Centre for Housing and Urban-Rural Development and Director of the Green Building Development Division, delivered a presentation entitled "Empowering Green Buildings through Technology: Cultivating New Growth Points in Green Construction." He emphasized that the 2025 Central Economic Work Conference explicitly called for the cultivation of new growth points in green construction within the housing and urban-rural development sector, while establishing a new ecosystem for green, low-carbon, and health-oriented industries. Dr. Liang contends that green buildings are a vital vehicle for Chinese-style modernization, embodying characteristics that promote harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature; they represent new productive forces that simultaneously address people's livelihood needs and development imperatives. 

 

Zhang Qinglin, Director of the Green Building and Sustainable Development Planning Centre at the Beijing Green Finance Institute, focused on the dual drivers of policy and technology. He interpreted current green-building policies and highlighted technologies including building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), energy-efficiency upgrades for lighting and lifts, energy-consumption reduction for air-conditioning systems, innovative building envelopes, and digital building intelligence. 

 

Li Congxiao, Deputy General Manager of the Planning Department at China State Construction Engineering Corporation, Deputy Director of the Dual-Carbon Office, and alumnus of the E02 Programme at the National School of Development, Peking University—addressed the transformation of construction enterprises. He stressed the urgent need for construction firms to transition to green practices, emphasizing that green finance is essential for technological upgrades, business-model  transformation, and improved overall ESG performance. 

 

Deng Yaohua, GRESB's (Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark) Chief Representative for China, outlined the positioning and role of GRESB ratings. He noted that these ratings serve as a reference for investment decisions by 150 global financial institutions that manage more than US$50 trillion in assets. The ratings also help participating enterprises use the framework as a roadmap and tool for risk management, asset preservation and appreciation, international brand promotion, and amplifying China's voice. 

 

Round-table Discussion: Green Finance and Urban Renewal 

Zhao Xiaoyu highlighted that China's building-energy-efficiency standards have risen progressively from 30% to 75% and are now entering a new phase of "energy conservation plus renewable energy application." However, policy subsidies face challenges during technical implementation. At the same time, the Green Finance Catalogue lacks sufficient granularity in defining "green building retrofits," and emerging technologies have not yet been fully incorporated, which hinders project access to financial resources. 

 

Huang Jing emphasized that small and medium-sized banks face a dilemma in green-building projects. On the one hand, they lack competitive advantages in the fierce competition for high-quality, large-scale projects; on the other hand, they struggle to secure financing for fragmented small-to-medium retrofits (such as energy-efficiency upgrades for existing buildings) because of high management costs and complex risk assessments. 

 

Xiao Zheng stressed that the core issue of "standardization gaps" is a key challenge in building digitalization: data collected via IoT and blockchain struggle to integrate directly with financial systems. Furthermore, new construction still adheres to outdated standards, and existing buildings lack unified technical specifications for digital retrofitting. 

 

Liu Hongzhou acknowledged that building inspections suffer from a "funding supply–demand imbalance"; simultaneously, large-scale inspection projects targeting government and corporate clients face financing hurdles. Financial institutions' risk-assessment frameworks for integrated "inspection + retrofit" projects are underdeveloped, which hinders the scalable roll-out of inspection services. 

 

Xue Shiwei identified a "fundamental divergence in attributes" between the construction and financial sectors as the main bottleneck: construction prioritizes safety and long-term operational sustainability, whereas finance pursues "low risk and high liquidity," resulting in mismatched expectations regarding return cycles. 

 

Core Recommendations: Multi-dimensional Breakthroughs to Build a Collaborative Ecosystem 

1. Policy level: promote inter-ministerial coordination, refine the Green Finance Catalogue, and establish a quantitative mechanism that links "technical contributions" to "subsidy standards." Explore differentiated risk-weighting policies for green assets to reduce lending costs for SME banks on green projects. 

 

2. Standards level: unify building-data-collection and financial-auditing standards to facilitate the integration of digital building archives with green-finance products. Accelerate the implementation of new green-construction standards by establishing an efficient green-building-material certification system. 

 

3. Industrial level: create a synergistic chain that integrates "technology + finance + data." 

 

4. Project level: use regional pilot schemes as breakthrough points, consolidate multi-stakeholder resources to develop replicable case studies, and establish a cooperative model based on "shared benefits and shared risks." 

 

This forum has established an efficient exchange platform for green economy applications and green finance practices, consolidated industry consensus, and injected fresh momentum into the green and low-carbon transformation of the construction sector and the high-quality development of urban renewal.

Urban Renewal and Green Finance Practice Forum

Oct 22-2025   



Keynote Addresses

Liang Hao, Senior Research Fellow at the Science and Technology Development Centre for Housing and Urban-Rural Development and Director of the Green Building Development Division, delivered a presentation entitled "Empowering Green Buildings through Technology: Cultivating New Growth Points in Green Construction." He emphasized that the 2025 Central Economic Work Conference explicitly called for the cultivation of new growth points in green construction within the housing and urban-rural development sector, while establishing a new ecosystem for green, low-carbon, and health-oriented industries. Dr. Liang contends that green buildings are a vital vehicle for Chinese-style modernization, embodying characteristics that promote harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature; they represent new productive forces that simultaneously address people's livelihood needs and development imperatives. 

 

Zhang Qinglin, Director of the Green Building and Sustainable Development Planning Centre at the Beijing Green Finance Institute, focused on the dual drivers of policy and technology. He interpreted current green-building policies and highlighted technologies including building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), energy-efficiency upgrades for lighting and lifts, energy-consumption reduction for air-conditioning systems, innovative building envelopes, and digital building intelligence. 

 

Li Congxiao, Deputy General Manager of the Planning Department at China State Construction Engineering Corporation, Deputy Director of the Dual-Carbon Office, and alumnus of the E02 Programme at the National School of Development, Peking University—addressed the transformation of construction enterprises. He stressed the urgent need for construction firms to transition to green practices, emphasizing that green finance is essential for technological upgrades, business-model  transformation, and improved overall ESG performance. 

 

Deng Yaohua, GRESB's (Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark) Chief Representative for China, outlined the positioning and role of GRESB ratings. He noted that these ratings serve as a reference for investment decisions by 150 global financial institutions that manage more than US$50 trillion in assets. The ratings also help participating enterprises use the framework as a roadmap and tool for risk management, asset preservation and appreciation, international brand promotion, and amplifying China's voice. 

 

Round-table Discussion: Green Finance and Urban Renewal 

Zhao Xiaoyu highlighted that China's building-energy-efficiency standards have risen progressively from 30% to 75% and are now entering a new phase of "energy conservation plus renewable energy application." However, policy subsidies face challenges during technical implementation. At the same time, the Green Finance Catalogue lacks sufficient granularity in defining "green building retrofits," and emerging technologies have not yet been fully incorporated, which hinders project access to financial resources. 

 

Huang Jing emphasized that small and medium-sized banks face a dilemma in green-building projects. On the one hand, they lack competitive advantages in the fierce competition for high-quality, large-scale projects; on the other hand, they struggle to secure financing for fragmented small-to-medium retrofits (such as energy-efficiency upgrades for existing buildings) because of high management costs and complex risk assessments. 

 

Xiao Zheng stressed that the core issue of "standardization gaps" is a key challenge in building digitalization: data collected via IoT and blockchain struggle to integrate directly with financial systems. Furthermore, new construction still adheres to outdated standards, and existing buildings lack unified technical specifications for digital retrofitting. 

 

Liu Hongzhou acknowledged that building inspections suffer from a "funding supply–demand imbalance"; simultaneously, large-scale inspection projects targeting government and corporate clients face financing hurdles. Financial institutions' risk-assessment frameworks for integrated "inspection + retrofit" projects are underdeveloped, which hinders the scalable roll-out of inspection services. 

 

Xue Shiwei identified a "fundamental divergence in attributes" between the construction and financial sectors as the main bottleneck: construction prioritizes safety and long-term operational sustainability, whereas finance pursues "low risk and high liquidity," resulting in mismatched expectations regarding return cycles. 

 

Core Recommendations: Multi-dimensional Breakthroughs to Build a Collaborative Ecosystem 

1. Policy level: promote inter-ministerial coordination, refine the Green Finance Catalogue, and establish a quantitative mechanism that links "technical contributions" to "subsidy standards." Explore differentiated risk-weighting policies for green assets to reduce lending costs for SME banks on green projects. 

 

2. Standards level: unify building-data-collection and financial-auditing standards to facilitate the integration of digital building archives with green-finance products. Accelerate the implementation of new green-construction standards by establishing an efficient green-building-material certification system. 

 

3. Industrial level: create a synergistic chain that integrates "technology + finance + data." 

 

4. Project level: use regional pilot schemes as breakthrough points, consolidate multi-stakeholder resources to develop replicable case studies, and establish a cooperative model based on "shared benefits and shared risks." 

 

This forum has established an efficient exchange platform for green economy applications and green finance practices, consolidated industry consensus, and injected fresh momentum into the green and low-carbon transformation of the construction sector and the high-quality development of urban renewal.