Want to live in a 5-star rated home? Here’s how it can be possible

Living in a 5-star rated house or working out of a green building might have sounded as something preposterous a few years ago but today, the trend is catching up fast. Sustainability is something that concerns millennials as well as baby boomers of this day and age equally. But there are solutions.

Institutes such as GRIHA (Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment) — a not-for-profit organization established jointly by TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute) and MNRE (Ministry of New and Renewable Energy) and India’s National Rating System for green buildings — provide evaluation as well as consultancy services to facilitate the development of green buildings. They evaluate the environmental performance of a building based on quantitative and qualitative criteria. But, what are green buildings, why do we need them and what’s all the fuss about sustainability?

The 11th GRIHA Summit was organised in New Delhi on 17-18 December 2019 in collaboration with GRIHA Council and UNSW, Sydney. Speaking to ET at the summit on Tuesday, Sanjay Seth, CEO, GRIHA Council, explained the nitty-gritty of the industry to help understand what green buildings are all about. When asked about what green buildings are, he said that green buildings are those buildings which are resource efficient both in terms of their design and operation. “They operate on efficiencies which help you to bring down your energy consumption, they use less water, provide a healthier and comfortable environment and they generate less waste,” he said.

Talking about sustainability, Seth said, “sustainability is that you bring in resource efficiency in everything.” Focussing on building construction, he put across an introspective statement saying: “When constructing a building, where are you taking the material from? Sand, stone, all of this. From Earth. It is important that we don’t use up natural resources. We should try and see what we can do to be taking away less from the planet. Achieving more with less. That’s the idea.”

He believes sustainability should be measurable and there should be tools and ways to evaluate the sustainability of a building. GRIHA has certain benchmarks and they evaluate buildings on the basis of those benchmarks and rate them accordingly, he informed. Moreover, being an indigenous tool, it has been built according to the climatic conditions of India. Discussing their evaluation process, he said: “We do it in three stages. Right from the design to the construction and its operation. We evaluate the site (planning), resource efficiency of materials used, construction practices, energy efficiency, water conservation, air quality, solid waste management and above all safety and sanitation for the labourers.” Further, he also mentioned that tracking the performance of buildings being constructed as well as existing ones at various stages is also necessary. “GRIHA operates on the principle of ‘what gets measured, gets managed’, that is our underlying mantra.” Informing us their rating system, he said, “we monitor the building for one complete year before we really award the rating.”

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Speaking about the challenges that the sustainable development and green building sector is currently tackling, he said: “One of the biggest challenges right now is that we are still trying to bridge the gap between demand and supply. And the other is that green is always associated with an incremental cost. But that is not true. Green buildings do not cost more.”

Talking about the government’s role, Seth said: “We’ve started talking about green buildings through regulations only in the last 12 years or so. The first commercial building code for energy was introduced in 2007. The sector is in a nascent stage. To ensure large-scale adoption the Government of India, through various municipalities and state government authorities, has introduced various incentive schemes such as additional FAR (floor-area-ratio) for developers which makes them realise that if I go green, I get additional space to sell.” The government also requires developers to get pre-certification from agencies such as GRIHA to be eligible to avail such incentives, he added.

Further, he informed us that the government has already set the norms and many government buildings are leading by example. For example, the Maharashtra government has signed an agreement with GRIHA Council to ensure that all their buildings constructed in the future would be compliant to GRIHA standards. UIDAI’s (Aadhaar) head office in Delhi is a 5-star rated GRIHA building. Upon realising the benefits of it, they have said that it would be ensured that all their 8 regional offices across the country would be 5-star rated buildings as per GRIHA standards. Moreover, their residential complexes would also be compliant with these standards.

Addressing concerns over public awareness, he told us that they were actively engaged in taking initiatives to improve the green building scenario. The summit was a prime example of their efforts. They are sensitizing people on the need for going green and also recognizing people who are taking initiatives. The Indian Institute of Architects has signed up with the GRIHA Council to reach out to people to sensitise them and make them understand why to invest in green. “The Council of architecture has also signed an MoU with GRIHA and yesterday we signed an MoU with the National Real Estate Development Corporation to make sure that the developer community starts constructing green buildings and goes the GRIHA way.”

Discussing effective building practices, he said that by using simple techniques the efficiency of a building can be increased significantly and the intervention of technology can be reduced. “If buildings are constructed keeping local climatic conditions in mind, by doing sun path analysis and by using locally available material, then costs can be reduced, the building will be much more sustainable and it will perform in a much better way which will reduce the dependency on technology.”

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Shedding light on the future of the sector, Seth said: “Energy efficiency, sustainability, green, these terms may sound simple but they are very tough in terms of convincing people because it’s always that first cost that affects the decision-making process. We need to change the mindset of the people. There has been a gradual uptick and we’ve nearly tripled our footprint in the last three years.” Addressing cost-related issues, he further added: “People are gradually understanding that the cost increment makes sense. Suppose there was an incremental cost of 2-3% or 5%, it will get paid back through the operations in maybe 3 or 4 years. But the building stands there for 60 to 70 years. So, after the payback has been made, the building keeps paying you back in terms of savings in energy, reduction in water usage, less waste generation.”

Speaking on future opportunities, he said, “a bulk of our infrastructure is yet to be built.” Only 35-40% of the infrastructure is currently in place and it’s important to make sure that the rest of the 60-65% is built on a sustainable path.

When asked about GRIHA’s proliferation rate, Seth told us that the organization has footprints all over the country which includes Maharashtra, Haryana, Delhi NCR, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and several other states where major constructions are happening. Several private developers such as IREO, Bestech, DLF, Mahindra, Godrej, Vatika etc. have also partnered with GRIHA to ensure that whatever they construct is green, he added. He further expressed that the business aspect of any practice is also very important. “Once a developer finds a business case in it they become your partners forever.”

He also said that there are several other organizations as well which are working for the same cause and trying to convince people to adopt green buildings. He hopes that gradually there will be a transformation in the market and people will start understanding that green does not cost more.

Before concluding, Sanjay Seth left us with the three messages: “First, it is consumers who need to demand. If we demand, the developers will deliver. Next, we need to follow the principle that what gets measured, gets managed. And lastly, ‘Earth ko anarth se bachaiye (save Earth from being destroyed)’. Let’s not screw up our planet.”

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