As COP26 meeting is around the corner where all the 193 countries would discuss on the issues on temperature rise and climate change. Many of us are already experiencing the problems due to climate change like intense rainfalls, severe cyclones, disastrous landslides which are occurring frequently. At COP26, the agenda of initiating decarbonisation by bringing down the emissions, construction sector has an important role to play. A major thrust should be given on wider adoption of environmentally sustainable technologies to further enhance integrated management of water, energy and waste, from buildings to built environment, to showcase the tangible results. While many might look at buildings and see only an inanimate structure, the green and net zero buildings consider the physicality and the process by which the buildings create opportunities not only to save significant energy, water and carbon emissions, but to increase awareness, create green jobs, strengthen communities, improve health and wellbeing, and much more. The Indian Green Building Council (IGBC), formed by CII, has been spearheading the green building movement in the country since 2001. T he vision of the council is to enable sustainable built environment for all and India to be one of the global leaders in sustainable built environment by 2025. IGBC is the only green building council representing India at World Green Building Council (World GBC). WorldGBC is a global influential organisation on green built environment with over Seventy-Three countries as members from across the globe. IGBC is making all efforts to imbibe India’s 5,000-year-old heritage along with modern innovations and technologies, to facilitate in development of greener and healthier spaces. The greatest strength of IGBC lies in rediscovery of the Pancha Bhutas (five elements of nature) aligning them with Green concepts viz. Site management with Prithvi, Water conservation with Jal, Energy efficiency with Agni, Air Quality with Vayu and Day light with Akash. IGBC gives high importance to the correlation between occupants’ health, well-being and performance of the built-environment, emphasising that people-centric design is an integral part of green buildings. To accelerate the adoption of Green Concepts, IGBC has developed 29 rating guidelines with National consensus to cover various forms of built environment. IGBC rating systems are highly relevant to the Indian context and climatic conditions. The IGBC guidelines have seamlessly integrated National codes & standards like National Building Code (NBC), BEE’s Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC), MoEF’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) guidelines, etc. as reference baselines. The activities of CII-IGBC are fully aligned with the Government of India programmes & initiatives – Aatmanirbhar Bharat, Swachh Bharat Mission, Make in India, Digital India, Vocal for Local. These rating guidelines are also in-line with UN Sustainability Development Goals. IGBC encourages the projects to adopt green principles and address the national priorities such as energy efficiency, water conservation, waste management, increased use of clean energy and reduction in carbon emissions. For example, IGBC certified projects have relatively lower energy consumption as compared with the baseline energy consumption of similar buildings, resulting in reduced load on the National grid. Further, many green buildings use onsite and offsite renewable energy sources to offset the energy requirement, which reduces the intensity of carbon emissions. Market transformation Highly scientific tools like energy simulation, lighting analysis and building management system were introduced in India by IGBC. Until early 2000, these tools were not so popular in the Indian building sector. Additionally, many innovative and sustainable building materials, products and technologies have been introduced to the building sector by IGBC, since 2001. Some of these include high efficiency chillers, high performance glass, large scale use of fly ash blocks, solar photovoltaic panels, waterless urinals, eco-friendly paints, CO2 sensors, building insulation and many others.
