Date: 29/11/2022

Relevance: GS-3: Environmental Pollution and Degradation, Climate Change and Greenhouse Gasses.

Key Phrases: Sustainable Housing, Greenhouse Gas, Conventional Housing, Building and Construction Industry, Energy-intensive Process, Low-carbon Material, Climate Change, Recycling, GHG Footprint, Electricity Consumption, Retrofitting House, Energy-saving Measures, Financial interventions.

Context:

• Setting standards for material use, and reducing carbon footprint during the construction and life-cycle of a building are vital for sustainable housing.

Key Highlights:

• The building and construction industry accounts for around 6.5 per cent of India's GDP.
• The total building floor area is expected to increase from the 2015 baseline of 15.8 billion m2 to around 30 billion m2 by 2038.
• Housing is a major greenhouse gas emitting sector, consuming about 24 per cent of the country’s electricity and emitting over 20 percent of total GHG.

Need for Sustainability:

• Throughout the life-cycle of a building, the sector consumes a significant amount of energy.
  • Therefore, increased participation and coordinated action from stakeholders in the entire value chain are imperative to effectively de-risk the industry from climate hazards while continuing to innovate and provide a sustainable environment.
• Building and housing projects are growing exponentially because of rapid urbanization, population explosion and economic expansion.
  • This will significantly escalate the demand for embodied carbon-intensive construction materials like cement, steel, bricks, glass, etc.
• The Energy Conservation Building Code and Eco-Niwas Samhita measure energy performance based on the operational usage of the building, but ignore the structure’s embedded carbon.
  • This must be addressed.
• Country’s electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emission percentages are expected to increase as housing demand accelerates.
  • It will make it difficult to achieve green transition targets.
• Conventional housing materials such as concrete and steel are made with energy-intensive processes.

Constraints:

• The decarbonisation initiatives in the country’s building and construction sector are focused mainly on tackling operational carbon, with little attention paid to the life-cycle approach, including embodied carbon.
• There is a lack of commitment from customers and suppliers of building materials to embrace low-carbon approaches.
  • Only a few cement producers and construction companies have committed to net-zero operations.
• The lack of reliable, high-quality data from life cycle assessments (LCAs) and environmental product declarations (EPDs) makes setting benchmarks and establishing targets challenging.
  • This is made worse by the dearth of affordable technological options to support the development and application of embodied carbon reduction initiatives.
• India lacks a well-defined set of standards for appropriate material use in buildings, inhibiting thereby the exploration of alternative materials and their demand optimisation through economies of scale.
• India spends 0.65 per cent of its GDP on R&D, which is very low compared to that of major economies like China (2.4 per cent) and the US (3.06 per cent).

Way Forward:

• Building design professionals are discovering new opportunities that can decrease environmental consequences, conserve resources and cut costs.
  • This will ensure material efficiency across the value chain of the construction sector.
• It is necessary to find, examine and evaluate the viability of best practices and technologies for decreasing embodied carbon emissions in the building and construction sector.
• A building’s life cycle can be increased and demolition waste reduced by utilizing the built space for adaptability, disassembly, and reuse.
• The 4Rs — reduce, replace, recycle and reuse — benefit communities, owners, tenants, the economy, and the environment.
• For decarbonisation of the industry, a significant expansion in renewable energy capacity should be encouraged.
• The use of low-carbon materials, following sustainable construction processes, and recycling building materials can lower the GHG footprint.
• An appropriate blend of active and passive design elements when constructing, should be promoted.
  • It can reduce energy usage by over 35 per cent.
• Retrofitting roofs, windows, and doors that have higher energy performance.
  • It can reduce heating and cooling demands by up to 40 per cent.
• Manufacturer guarantees and warranties can be augmented with standardized performance certifications from government agencies.
• Public institutions can nudge the private players by innovative financing models and policies to fund the much-needed low-carbon housing sector.

Conclusion:

• Given the advantages it offers, the incentives that the government is providing to this construction and the growing demand by the environment-conscious consumers, the future for sustainable and green housing seems very bright.

Source: BusinessLine

Mains Question:

Q. What are the major challenges for the development of the sustainable building industry in India? Also, suggest measures to overcome these challenges. (250 Words).