How energy-efficient building benefit cities?

Based on an article by Eric Mackres on "4 surprising ways energy-efficient buildings benefit cities" it was interesting to learn more about how buildings with energy efficient qualities can enrich our cities. 

The talks about the New WRI research examines how these building can help to shape sustainable cities of the future. The research examines four economic, social and environmental opportunities building efficiency creates:

1. "Better social and financial return"
2. "Huge economic opportunities - particularly for developing nations in Asia, Africa and Latin America"
3. "An affordable way to curb climate change"

One of the statistics that surprised me in this article is how building is one of the most affordable ways to cut emissions. In addition of cutting infrastructure cost and household expenses, building efficient can is one of the cheapest ways to reduce clime change- causing emission. This is because efficiency improvement in building often have low or no marginal cost. This means a return on investment in terms of energy cost savings can be as quickly as six months to a year. 

4. "Reduced illness and death due to air pollution"

Looking at the mapped out statistics for "Mortality linked to Outdoor Air Pollution in 2010" make me feel so sad about my hometown in China. Considering China is the biggest exporting countries, low labour cost production & relatively not strict on environmental control, inevitably the toxic air pollution. No wonder there is a market for people buying buying "bottled air" from Australia. 

p.s Thoughts on bottled air from Australia - Please stop producing products that can only be used for 10mins and it gets sent to landfill. Knowing well that majority of the these consumers will not recycle these bottles.  
Reference
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/4-surprising-ways-energy-efficient-buildings-benefit-cities
http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/entrepreneur/australian-entrepreneurs-sell-cans-of-clean-australian-air-to-china-20160502-gojw1x.html