A 71-story building was just unveiled in Guangzhou, China, that architects bill as a net-zero-energy skyscraper. The claim is that it will conserve and generate enough power to meet its energy demands (Thomas Friedman, call your office!). Time will tell whether the Pearl River Tower experiment in green building works as advertised. Nevertheless, one would think that enthusiasm for the project in green circles would be running sky-high. Not so, actually.
As Jonathan Schein, the publisher of metrogreenbusiness.com, explains over at the Huffington Post, the benefits of building the world’s most energy efficient building are practically washed away by the fact that the principal tenant will be the China National Tobacco Corporation. Writes Schein: “The tower’s short-term environmental gains will be far outpaced by the company’s damage to air quality and health. Hopefully China National Tobacco will use some of its huge revenues to build zero-energy hospitals and cancer care centers.”