Battle of the Solar Powered Office Buildings! Who Will Be the Biggest?

Perhaps there is no real irony in this, but the two countries whom will be battling it out for supremacy to build “the biggest” renewable energy powered office buildings are China and Abu Dhabi.  A cynic might think that the push for this lies in the positive PR that would come from completing such large scale green projects, to counter the fact that one country continues to be a super-polluter (admittedly, there are other countries who fare not much better per capita) and the other a global source of fossil fuels.

 The current title of world’s largest solar powered office building goes to China.  Designed to be reminiscent of an ancient “sun dial”, this 800,000 square foot complex in Dezhou, Shangdong Province, is certainly striking.  The facility houses exhibition centres, research facilities, meeting and convention spaces, as well as a full hotel.  The sun dial’s roof hosts solar panels to provide electric power to the facility.  The fact that the facility uses renewable energy isn’t the only green aspect to this building – the building boasts high efficiency wall insulation and roofing which translates into a 30% energy saving over its average counterpart.

China’s title as the largest such building may stand for longer than originally projected.  Abu Dhabi is scheduled to start construction on its highly publicized Masdar City next month.  Touted as being the world’s first sustainable city when completed, there are considerable pressures on its $22 billion dollar price tag.  With the financial problems experienced in such neighbours as Dubai, and the resulting impact on other large scale development projects, there may be real hurdles to overcome in order to reach the full original vision of this project.  One of the key components of the city’s vision is a 1.4 million square foot solar building, intended to go beyond being energy neutral and to actually be energy positive by producing more energy than it will use.  

Time will tell if this vision, scheduled for completion in 2016, will end up stealing the crown from China, to go into the record books as the world’s largest solar powered office building!

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Posted by SBurke on Jan 13 2010. Filed under Energy Tech, Green Building, New Economy, Solar Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry