Environment | Let’s focus on the carbon footprint of India’s buildings 

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On April 26, India’s peak power demand hit an all-time high of 201 GW. This coupled with the coal shortage created an unprecedented power crisis. It also presented an opportunity for policy-makers to look at energy demand for solutions. The shortage of power, blackouts, voltage fluctuations and so on, often find media attention, but what is missing is a conversation on how to plan for future demand, and to regulate it better.

After industry, India’s buildings consume the most amount of power, accounting for a third of electricity consumption in 2020-21. As 70 percent of India’s power supply currently comes from coal, buildings indirectly contribute to significant levels of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs). More energy efficient, climate-responsive buildings can significantly reduce power demand while achieving comfort indoors during the summer, and thus reduce GHG emissions as well.

To make existing buildings energy efficient, we must first understand its current power usage, and its relative performance compared to other buildings. Benchmarking does exactly this, where buildings of the same type, located in similar climates, being used similarly can be compared based on their energy use.

Globally, building energy performance benchmarks are established in terms of energy use intensity (EUI), usually described as kWh/m² or British Thermal Unit/m². The exercise, usually undertaken by government agencies, may also be done by building owners interested in improving their asset portfolios compared with peers, a national standard, or established best-in-class buildings. The process begins with establishing a baseline energy use of buildings. Each building’s calculated EUI is then compared with similar structures after homogenising for physical, climatic, and operational characteristics.

Globally, benchmarking has emerged as an enabler of continuous improvements in energy efficiency of existing buildings. For example, in New York City, benchmarking and transparency programmes led to 6 percent and 14 percent cumulative reductions in buildings EUI after three and four years, respectively. Similar efforts in India have been limited in their depth, and frequency.

At the municipal level, benchmarking has been used by cities to identify buildings with the highest energy saving opportunities, and design retrofits to gradually increase average efficiency of the building stock.

Benchmarking programmes drive urban administrators and planning agencies to initiate data collection from buildings. This helps better understand emissions reduction opportunities. When complimented with transparency, that is, public disclosures of performance, benchmarking can catalyse the buildings and construction sector to adopt energy efficiency in their design and supply chains, it could change behaviours and practices of building owners and managers, and veer them towards clean energy measures.

In Kochi, WRI conducted a benchmarking survey of 50 offices to understand the feasibility of conducting a city-wide benchmarking exercise. The study found that building owners lack knowledge of the efficiency retrofits market, but are interested in changing equipment and appliances when provided with the information on their building’s poor performance compared to others.

We also observed that building owners and managers were unaware of Energy Performances Contracting (EPC) business models attempted in mature markets to implement energy efficiency projects.

The study concluded that Indian cities may not have the institutional and technical competence to conduct a building benchmarking exercise on their own. But municipalities can work with the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), electric utilities and state designated agencies (SDAs) to implement benchmarking programmes where they could facilitate and convene buildings for data collection.

Cities can start small. While granular data yields better results, a phased approach, where the benchmarking process starts off simple and builds in complexity over time, allows for more layers of information at each phase. Cities could also be motivated to build benchmarking activities to meet reporting requirements under national schemes and programmes like Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework.

Going forward, benchmarking exercises covering multiple cities, climate zones, and building typologies can enable impactful energy efficiency interventions, and inform policies on building energy codes.

Finally, energy performance benchmarking underscores the importance of urban buildings as major emitters of greenhouse gasses and their role in mitigating these emissions. The goal to keep Climate Change under 1.5 degrees cannot be achieved if our buildings do not attempt to transition to low carbon consumption in the next few decades.