The rate of building construction within the APEC economies is unparalleled in human history, with China alone accounting for half of all new construction in the world. Furthermore, economic growth has led to increased use of mechanical space conditioning, so that the energy intensity of buildings has also steadily increased. To control this explosive growth in energy use, nearly all APEC economies having enacted some form of building energy standard over the past two decades, particularly within the last ten years.

In a previous project supported by the Asia Business Council, building energy standards and supporting building energy policies were surveyed in ten economies, including nine APEC economies. The key objective of this project is to build on prior work that has been carried out to survey the current status of building energy codes in APEC economies, and compare their scope, level of stringency, and enforcement mechanisms of the current building codes, with particular focus on identifying effective programs and strategies that can be shared.

The project resulted in a summary report with two sections:  1) Technical comparison of APEC building energy standards. The report also includes quantitative comparisons of the energy standard requirements across different economies, adjusting for differences in metrics, climate, and building conditions (i.e., size and architectural styles); and 2) Comparison of implementation efforts, emphasizing innovative or successful programs.  The report compares the findings across the different APEC economies, highlighting those strategies and policies that have been effective and could be shared or adopted in other APEC economies.