Water-Conservation Measures for China's Public Institutions
Editor's note: This article is an edited summary of the water-conservation management measures for public institutions released by China's National Government Offices Administration jointly with the Ministry of Water Resources in 2024. It is provided for industry reference and is not an official translation; please refer to the official Chinese text for authoritative content.
The Measures set out how publicly funded institutions in China should manage, supervise, and improve their water use. They apply to state organs, public institutions, and organizations that are fully or partially funded by fiscal funds, and comprise five chapters and 26 articles covering general principles, water-use management, conservation measures, and supervision.
Principles and Responsibilities
Water conservation in public institutions follows the principles of total-quantity control, quota management, efficient utilization, adaptation to local conditions, and collaborative participation. The National Government Offices Administration is responsible for promoting, guiding, coordinating, and supervising water conservation by public institutions nationwide, under the guidance of the Ministry of Water Resources. Sector authorities for education, science and technology, culture and tourism, health, and sports guide water conservation within their respective systems, while individual institutions must establish internal water-management systems and play an exemplary role for wider society.
Key Management Requirements
Public institutions are required to set annual water-saving targets and implementation plans and to adopt targeted management or retrofit measures to meet them. Water quotas apply to public institutions, and institutions above a defined scale of water use are subject to planned water-use management, with progressive surcharges applied where use exceeds the plan or quota.
Metering receives particular attention. Institutions must install and use metering instruments verified by legal metrology authorities, check and calibrate them regularly, and meter water separately by source, by purpose, by secondary water-using units, and by major water-using equipment. The Measures expressly encourage the installation of intelligent metering and monitoring instruments to enable online collection of water-use data and real-time monitoring. Each institution must designate a person responsible for water statistics, record metering data accurately, and analyze usage regularly; where monthly consumption exceeds the plan, the institution is expected to identify causes and rectify them in a timely manner.
The Measures also require regular publicity and training — for example around World Water Day, China Water Week, and National Urban Water Conservation Promotion Week — and encourage institutions with facilities open to the public to organize water-conservation education. Supervisory departments may issue rectification recommendations, which institutions must implement promptly.
Relevance to Smart Metering
The emphasis on sub-metering, online data collection, and real-time monitoring points to growing demand for connected water metering and monitoring across public buildings and campuses. Hitelecom's wireless sensor terminals and cloud monitoring platform can support such metering and early-warning scenarios.
Source: National Government Offices Administration website (2024). Edited summary by Hitelecom.
