China's property developers were required Saturday to build energy-efficient homes in a bid to cut carbon emission.

Developers should construct more compact apartments and avoid wasting space to reduce carbon dioxide emission, said Gu Yunchang, vice president of China Real Estate Research Association, at a forum held in Chengdu, capital of southwestern Sichuan province.

The developers should expand green areas in the residential communities, as low vegetation coverage curbs the absorption of carbon dioxide, according to Gu.

Gu also called for widely utilization of renewable energy including solar, wind and geothermal energy, and uniform decorations by the developers to reduce resource waste.

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At present China's construction energy consumption accounts for 40 percent of the entire society per year, said Gu.

Green buildings are both a development trend and the core competitiveness for Chinese developers in the future, said Wu Shiyan, general manager of the subsidiary real estate company of China Railway Construction Corp.

China's developers have reaped high profits and seen huge expansion in recent years. Net profit of China Vanke, the country's largest property developer, jumped nearly 30 percent year-on-year to about 3 billion yuan ($439 million) in the first three quarters of this year.

Data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed total investment in real estate development in January-November period valued at 3,127.1 billion yuan, up 17.8 percent year-on-year.

A total of 2.988 billion square meters of floor space was under construction in the first 11 months of the year, an increase of 17.2 percent from a year earlier, the NBS data said.