Residential buildings make up 75 per cent of India’s construction market, still it is yet to become a priority for energy efficiency policy for India, a study by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has noted. It has favoured doling out incentives to residential building developers to encourage them to construct green homes to help cut down carbon emission and combat climate change.
India intends to reduce the emissions intensity of its gross domestic product by 33–35 per cent by 2030 from the 2005 level. To achieve this target, improvement in energy efficiency is required in all sectors, especially in the building sector, as the building sector in India consumes over 30 per cent of the total electricity.
A green building or sustainable building (according to some) puts into consideration energy use, water use, indoor environmental quality, building material, and effects on its site during the planning, designing, construction, and operations of buildings.
To date, efforts of India’s policymakers have focused on reducing energy consumption in new commercial buildings. Achieving significant scale will depend on efficiency measures becoming standard practice in the commercial middle market, retrofit, and, particularly, the residential buildings segment, said the EIU in its report “Achieving scale in energy-efficient buildings in India--A view from the construction and real estate sectors.”
The report focuses on incentivizing the developers engaged in the residential home sector as the gross electricity consumption in residential buildings has been rising sharply over the years. Data says, building energy-consumption figures rose to 260 Trillion watt in 2016–17, which was 55 TWh in 1996–97]. It is estimated that this will further increase in the range of 630–940 TWh by 2032.
The Government, to address energy efficiency in the commercial building sector, launched the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) in 2007. The code was extended to the residential buildings through ECBC 2018-R (Eco-Home guidelines) and it applies to all the residential-use buildings built on a plot area of more than 500 m2.
Stating that the “time is ripe for the government to make energy-efficient building an attractive business with profit potential,” the EIU suggested that by capitalizing on India’s massive construction boom, the government can help achieve scale in energy-efficient buildings and slow the growth of CO2 emissions.
It noted that developers are less attracted by potential energy savings since these mostly benefit homeowners, so they would like to see more incentives for energy efficient residential construction.