HAMBURG HOUSE: The house is located at the Urban Best Practices Area of the Shanghai Expo site (LU LING)

World Expo's China Pavilion is a large crimson building, but it's green at heart. The pavilion, a magnificent symbol of Chinese culture, is also a "green landmark" on the world stage, thanks to German company Siemens' energy-saving solutions.

Illuminating the building, which has a vertical height of 66 meters, is not an easy task. Standard floodlights aren't powerful enough to reach the great height while maintaining their vibrancy, but Siemens has taken on the challenge by using state-of-the-art light-emitting diodes (LED) high-powered floodlights. They were supplied by Siemens' subsidiary company, OSRAM.

"The expected longevity of the lights that OSRAM supplied to the China Pavilion is 15 times that of traditional light bulbs. The lights will save a tremendous amount of energy," said Richard Hausmann, CEO of Siemens Northeast Asia.

They actually consume 70 percent less energy than standard floodlights and 30 percent less energy than standard LED lights.

Siemens has also equipped the China Pavilion with the Building Automation System (BAS). The system ensures a comfortable and clean indoor environment while centralizing the monitoring and management of the equipment, from lights, to elevators, heating and security systems. Due to the system, the China Pavilion is estimated to save 25 percent of energy and half the amount of labor when compared to buildings of the same scale.

At a press conference held on May 19, Siemens announced that its Shanghai Expo-related contracts totaled more than 1 billion euros. Some 90 percent of the contracts were related to environmental protection, such as technologies and solutions for mass transit, buildings and health care systems.

These green technologies are in use at the China Pavilion, the Theme Pavilion, the Cultural Center, the Expo Center and the Expo Axis. They are also employed at the Hamburg House, the Expo Village, the Germany Pavilion and other Expo-related buildings.

Siemens' cooperation with the World Expo can be traced to the first World Expo, held in London in 1851, when Siemens was only a 4-year-old company. It provided warning bells for railroad crossings, the first chemical-signal telegraph and other technologies and products. It won the Council Medal, the highest award of the London World Expo. In the 159 years since 1851, Siemens has provided support and services to 17 World Expos, including the ongoing one in Shanghai.

Passive house

The Hamburg House is a unique permanent structure in the World Expo's Urban Best Practices Area (UBPA). Its energy consumption is only 10 percent that of an ordinary house. Without air conditioning or heating, it can maintain a stable indoor temperature of around 25 degrees Celsius. The house is the first certified "passive house" in China.

"Passive house" refers to a building that requires little energy consumption for heating or cooling. The first such house was built in the 1990s. Its main structure is wood and its construction costs only 7 percent more than a regular house. Its maintenance costs are very low. Solar energy supplies all the heat and electricity consumed in the house.

A passive house can be any type of building and a regular building can be renovated into a passive house. So far, more than 6,000 passive houses are in use in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. The prototype of the Hamburg House at the World Expo site is named "H2O" and is located in Hamburg, Germany.

"In the unique, almost airtight structure is a perfect zero-emission energy self-sufficient system," said a staff member at the Hamburg House. The house meets most of its energy needs by making full use of heat from human bodies and electrical appliances, as well as renewable energies such as geothermal energy and solar power.

The house is in operation from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and staff keep the door closed to ensure a constant temperature inside. Currently, the number of daily visitors to the house is limited at 200 persons in order to keep the temperature stable.

The rooftop is covered with an 18-cm heat-insulating layer. The red bricks of the exterior walls are specially made to maximize their insulating power. The windows may look ordinary, but each has three layers of glass made from special heat-proof materials and anti-thermal radiation coatings. Movable sun visors are installed outside the windows to block sunlight.

Centralized ventilation equipment brings in freshly cooled or heated dehumidified air, and recovers at least 90 percent of heat from the room.