"Carbon neutrality is not a sacrifice"

Tim Feng: We look at real estate from a life-cycle perspective. The cycle starts from the time you start to source materials and goes through the construction process all the way down to the operations.

When we looked at the whole cycle, we realized that actually, it produced 50% of the entire carbon emissions of society. We thought, "We've looked at how sustainability should be incorporated into the procurement and sourcing of timber, steel, and other building materials. But we haven’t seriously thought through the whole life cycle."

In 2017, Vanke Group launched Deep Rock. Its vision is to decarbonize the whole life cycle of the built environment.

Gavin Allen: Tell us about some of your decarbonization initiatives.

Tim Feng: We're increasing the use of renewable energy, such as solar panels. For example, along the coastline of Shenzhen in southern China, we've created something called "wave energy generation." It's a platform on the ocean. As the waves fluctuate, the platform produces energy, floating on the waves like a magic carpet.

But by itself, renewable energy can't go very far, particularly if you want to create viable business models. So, we combine that wave-energy technology with a Smart Micro Grid. It combines energy storage with a data monitoring and management system to optimize the use of renewable energy. This gives the companies that provide renewable energy solutions a chance to make a profit.

Gavin Allen: What else do you do to make your properties more sustainable?

We recycle food waste. Since 2005 or 2006, our corporate parent, Vanke Group, started to implement a community composting program. In China, food waste contains a lot of salt and oil. If you compost that and put it into fertilizer, it’s bad for the soil.

But through the research and practice, we found a magic insect called the black soldier fly. It eats thousands of times its body weight, consuming and converting the food – including oil and salt – into biomass. Eventually it becomes a really useful fertilizer. When it dies, you can freeze it and use it as a protein source for animal feed. We actually feed it to the chickens and ducks that we raise on our campus. This allows us to process food waste without putting it into landfill.

Gavin Allen: You've made a lot of innovative changes. What's been the end result?

Tim Feng: Because of our innovations, and the energy-efficiency improvements to our buildings, we have reduced their carbon footprints by 93%. One of our buildings was certified as LEED Platinum back in 2009, the first one in China. [LEED, for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a sustainability rating system for buildings.] So it's already high standard for green performance. That’s one metric.

But there's a second indicator, and that is the business case for companies that invest their money and time with us. Solar panel producers and similar companies work with us because with the micro-grid system, their financial payback period shrinks considerably.  

Gavin Allen: So this is all profitable.

Tim Feng: Yes. We should avoid feeling that only through sacrifice can you create something good for humanity. There's no shame in making a really strong business case. Actually, when you consider the huge financial commitments required to achieve carbon-neutral targets, it's the only way.