Since the international community raised awareness of the importance of global environmental protection at the Earth Summit 1992, pursuing sustainable development has become the wave of the future worldwide. During the past decade, experiencing severe disasters caused by hillside community landslides, sea sand house damages, mudflows and flood, the people of Taiwan realized that the sustainability should be one of the most urgent issues for our living environment. In response to public concern, the concept of Green Building and its corresponding policies were initiated by the public sector. Following such a pulse the development of Green Building in Taiwan has proved to be one of the major priority works.

Green Building LOGO

In order to strengthen the development of Green Building, powerful policies play an absolutely important role. The "Green Building Promotion Program" of Taiwan was proposed in March 2001 and first revised in May 2003. The program essentially forges a comprehensive mechanism providing resources, research, guidance, training, and education to support the adoption of green building in Taiwan. The major work emphasizes on site ecological environment technology, construction waste reduction, building energy conservation, natural resource usage, indoor environmental quality control, and green building demonstrative projects. One of the major promotional strategies in this program is to initiate green building design with all public buildings. Mandatory green building design for all new official buildings of central government was required in 2002, and for local government buildings in 2003. To date, we have more than 500 buildings certified as green building or green building candidate. Furthermore, the government also subsidized green remodeling projects for existing buildings. From 2002 to 2003, twenty-eight green remodeling projects were completed for official buildings and public schools, which total budget was 260 million NT dollars. The green remodeling projects employed a variety of green building technologies, including the insulation improvement work such as the installation of sun shading devices, the ecological protection work such as the constructed wetlands combined with the function of wastewater treatment and reuse, and so forth. The green building policy can be viewed as a successful work in the public sector.