Abstract

China’s green building standards stand as a pivotal technical underpinning for the implementation of ecological civilization and dual-carbon strategies in urban and rural domains, having undergone four evolutionary phases: conceptual framework exploration, incremental item-based evaluation, weighted scoring system development, and high-quality transformation. With the Green Building Evaluation Standard (GB/T 50378) as its backbone, a three-dimensional standard matrix featuring “general , specialized , regional” components has been constructed, covering the full building lifecycle spanning design, construction, operation, maintenance, and renovation. The 2019 version of the standard was restructured to establish five core performance indicators, including safety and durability, health and comfort, convenience in living, resource conservation, and environmental livability. A partial revision in 2024 further reinforced its carbon reduction orientation by introducing an evaluation logic centered on “mandatory baseline requirements, scientific quantification ,star-rating guidance,” integrating the management of both operational carbon and embodied carbon emissions, and linking with green building material applications to realize quantifiable carbon emission constraints. Currently, the standards address both the large-scale promotion of new buildings and the renewal demands of existing building stock. Looking forward, the standards will transition from a focus on relative energy efficiency to full-lifecycle carbon emission constraints, expand multi-dimensional assessments of healthy human settlements, develop digital-intelligent dynamic evaluation models, refine regulations related to green retrofitting of existing buildings, and explore pathways for international standard mutual recognition—continuously guiding the construction industry toward green low-carbon transformation and high-quality human settlement development.