The motivation and development impact of energy saving to sustainability in the construction of green campus: a case study of the Zhejiang University, China

The construction of green campus is related to the global sustainable development. Under the guidance of campus energy-saving policy, China’s green campus mainly focuses on campus’ energy saving. In contrast, the green campus in the USA pays more attention to environmental problems. This study focuses on the impact of “energy saving” on the sustainable development of green campus. On the one hand, it puts forward targeted optimization suggestions for the Chinese universities. On the other hand, it provides the experience reference and new development ideas for the global campus sustainability. Based on the characteristics of the development mode of green campus in China and the USA, this paper studies the motivation of “energy saving” to “sustainability” in the construction of green campus in China. In terms of research methods, this paper selects Zhejiang University a typical representative of China’s green campus that combined with the comparative group of four American universities and conducts a quantitative analysis of G -value and S -value that represented energy consumption and sustainability, respectively. Zhejiang University’s G -value (0.019) in 2016 is one-sixth of that of the comparative group in the same period, indicating that the implementation effect of the energy-saving monitoring platform is remarkable. From 2014 to 2017, the G -values are basically stable at 0.02, indicating that its future development potential is insufficient. Zhejiang University’s scores in the four categories of S -value are significantly lower than those in the comparative group, showing that there are great differences in the construction achievements of the five universities. According to the score rate of 17 sub-items of S -value, the five universities have different advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, the green campus construction of China’s case university is too one-sided and only stays at the level of energy conservation. The diversification of construction and the balanced development of all aspects should be paid more attention in the future.