Why is the stock of green buildings so low in India?
Authoured by Sanjay Seth, Senior Fellow & Senior Director, GRIHA Council Urban areas have been expanding extensively since the past few decades as centres of development. This expansion has resulted in the imprudent usage of natural resources. A possible way to manage this was devised way back in 2003 with the development of the first green building in India. Gradually, the green building movement picked up the pace, and several rating systems, primarily the Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment (GRIHA) and Indian Green Building Council (IGBC), came into existence to enhance the footprint of green buildings in India. Of these, GRIHA has been recognized by the Government of India to reduce the impacts of building on the environment, thereby aiming to fulfil India’s commitment towards the Paris Agreement. While the green buildings’ market in India is expected to touch 10 billion sqft by 2022, and their cumulative value is estimated to be anywhere between $35 billion-$50 billion. Despite a spike in the number of rating systems in India, the stock of green buildings remains disappointingly low. Several issues could be attributed to the low footprint of green buildings in the country. The first and foremost being a persistent misconception among the end-users that green buildings are expensive — they can be only constructed at exceptionally high costs and, therefore, can be afforded only by the affluent. The lack of consumer awareness and the shortage of critical mass of green building professionals only compound the problem further. Green and sustainable buildings can be made cost-effectively provided the decisions for the same are made at the right stage. It is in the hands of architects to make any building expensive or cost-effective. Traditional buildings such as the Hawa Mahal in Jaipur or the Golconda Fort near Hyderabad were built using vernacular architectural practices, eco-friendly materials, and were in harmony with local environmental factors. Another hidden benefit of green buildings is that they cut operation and maintenance costs drastically by almost 30-40% with negligible impact on capital investment in the project. It is widely proven that the pull towards the mainstreaming of any particular product, technology or process is primarily driven by consumer demand. The same is evident in the wide-scale adoption of LED lamps as well as the reduction in mobile phone tariff plans. Costs of both of these were exorbitantly high initially, but since consumers extended their confidence and demanded these products and services, their prices dropped drastically. Construction is a very dynamic sector; large scale adoption of new technologies will bring down the pricing through consumer demand aggregation in the green building sector as well. Additionally, there is a lack of confidence amongst the consumers in the building material sector. People are still not sure what is sustainable and what is not? Putting credible information, statistics and case studies in the public domain and widely accessed platforms on the benefits and acceptance of the green and sustainable material and technologies can be useful confidence-building measures for the consumers. To increase the stock of green buildings in India, many state governments have given lucrative incentives such as additional floor area ratio, subsidy on permit fees and capital investment, while the municipal corporations have taken the mandate forward by giving discounted development premiums to builders and property tax rebates to home buyers. These stimuli bode well for all the stakeholders, including the government, developers, and buyers. Fiscal incentives like these provide the initial nudge for greater adoption. However, these cannot sustain over the long term. Therefore, consumers and end-users only can create demand over the benefits of reduced operational costs and healthy environments that green buildings provide. Also, a handful of consultants and professionals alone cannot drive the Indian green buildings movement. Another way of creating awareness is by conducting periodic training programs, visits to existing green buildings, and increasing the capacity of various stakeholders such as policymakers, bilateral organisations, and educational institutions. An example of the capacity building programme would be a model that the GRIHA Council has developed in Maharashtra with their public works department. For the uninitiated, Maharashtra also happens to be the first state to lead the initiative of transforming its existing and to-be-built infrastructure at a large scale by committing upcoming structures to the green rating system, training its officials to evaluate building performance and offering incentives to builders for adopting green practices. The Maharashtra CPWD team has received training on the construction and development of green buildings; the objective of this is relatively straight forward – the technical expertise and skills of the individuals working on the ground get enhanced, and the same gets implemented at the site. Three hundred existing buildings were covered in the first phase of the green certification process in the state. In order to amplify the spread of green buildings and generate awareness among the end-users, Resident Welfare Associations of different residential societies across India have been roped in to learn about the basic concepts and merits of green buildings. There is a lot of work that needs to be done by way of different programs and initiatives that would help in enhancing the stock of green buildings in the country, and thus minimize the impact on the global carbon emissions. The right amalgamation of both top-down, as well as the bottom-up approach, is required to augment the footprint of green buildings in the country.
Tags : EXPERT ZONE Green Buildings Sanjay Seth GRIHA Council Sanjay Seth GRIHA Council LED lamps green buildings movement Maharashtra CPWD team residential societies