Green Buildings in India

Green building is the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings use resources — energy, water, and materials — while reducing building impacts on human health and the environment, through better site, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal, the complete Building life cycle.

Compared to a standard building, a green building ensures:

• Energy saving to the extent of 30 – 40 % right from day one
• Enhanced indoor air quality
• Higher productivity of occupants
• Potable water saving to the tune of 20% – 30%
• Enhanced day light & Ventilation

The Indian Green Building Council (IGBC), part of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) was formed in the year 2001, the first rating programme developed in India, exclusively for the residential sector. The vision of the council is to usher in a green building movement in India and facilitate India to become one of the global leaders in green buildings by 2010. There are several worldwide sustainable building alliances that are non-profit, non-partisan bodies pioneering changes as core green building catalysts to promote a healthier world.

According to TERI (The Energy And Resource Institute), “If energy efficient techniques developed by TERI are applied to just 10% of the buildings constructed in cities every year, India can expect enough savings to light 20 million rural households”. TERI can provide innovative solutions to promote energy efficiency in any building or group of buildings – old, new, or yet to be constructed. The Energy and Resource Institute plays a very important role in developing green building capacities in the country. TERI came up with a rating system called GRIHA which was adopted by the Government. of India as the National Green Building Rating System for the country. GRIHA aims at ensuring that all kinds of buildings become green buildings. The strengths of GRIHA lie in the fact that it rates even non-air conditioned buildings as green and puts great emphasis on local and traditional construction knowledge. THE CESE building in IIT Kanpur became the first GRIHA rated building in the country and it scored 5 stars, highest in GRIHA under the system. It has become a model for green buildings in the country. It has proved that with little extra investment, tremendous energy and water savings are possible. There are various projects which are the first of their kinds to attempt for green building ratings like apartment residential buildings and non-air conditioned buildings. Measures are being taken to spread awareness about the GRIHA-National Green Building Rating System of India.

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) encourages and accelerates global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted tools and performance criteria. (LEED-INDIA) a Green Building Rating System is a nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings. The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) plays an active role in promoting sustainability in the Indian construction sector. The CII is the central pillar of the Indian Green Building Council or IGBC. The IGBC has licensed the LEED Green Building Standard from the U.S. Green Building Council and currently is responsible for certifying LEED-New Construction and LEED-Core and Shell buildings in India. All other projects are certified through the U.S. Green Building Council. There are many energy efficient buildings in India, situated in a variety of climatic zones. One of these is RMZ Millenia Park, Chennai, India’s largest LEED gold-rated Core & Shell green building.

There are 150 LEED registered green buildings and 23 LEED certified green buildings in India. The LEED registered Green buildings are more in Mumbai (44 buildings). But the interesting thing to be noted is that the number of LEED rated buildings is the least in Mumbai (1 building) of all cities, whereas Chennai has the maximum number of LEED Rated Green Buildings, total 10 in number, with 23 LEED Registered Green Buildings.

CII-IGBC recently announced that Shree Ram Urban Infrastructure – a developer – is attempting the first ever LEED Platinum rating (Core & Shell) in India and will be the first ever residential building in the world to do so. Entitled ‘Palais Royale’, the building will be located in Worli, Mumbai, with an estimated height of over 1,000 ft (300 m). Also, Hyderabad based Aliens-Space Station1 and Space Station2 Residential projects are also in the process of achieving gold rated Green building certificate.

The Indian Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) had launched the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) on February 2007. The code is set for energy efficiency standards for design and construction with any building of minimum conditioned area of 1000 Sq mts and a connected demand of power of 500 KW or 600 KVA. The energy performance index of the code is set from 90 kW•h/sqm/year to 200 kW•h/sqm/year where any buildings that fall under the index can be termed as “ECBC Compliant Building”. More over the BEE had launched a 5 star rating scheme for office buildings operated only in the day time in 3 climatic zones, composite, hot and dry, warm and humid on 25 February 2009. The Reserve Bank of India’s buildings in Delhi and Bhubaneshwar, in Orissa have already been rated 4 star and 5 star respectively. Wipro Office in Gurgaon, in the National Capital Region, is also a green building.

The aim of all these bodies is singular, to have higher efficiency of resource use – energy, water, and materials – while reducing building impacts on human health and the environment during the building’s lifecycle, through better design, construction, operation, maintenance, storm water management and solid waste management. This is going to be future sustainable technology for the building and construction business. The impact of green buildings is so substantial and tangible that the world is already talking in terms of Green Cities.