Central govt buildings to go green soon

All the central government buildings across the county will be made energy conservation building code-compliant, according to Ajay Mathur, director-general of Bureau of Energy Efficiency, a government body that specifies standards of energy efficiency.

"The government wants to practice it (ECBC compliance) before it preaches. This is a decision, which is currently under processing. A notification to this effect will be issued shortly and all the new central government buildings and the existing ones would have to follow the code from the next couple of weeks," he said.

Mathur was speaking to Business Standard on the sidelines of the Confederation of Indian Industr's three-day Green Building Congress 2009, which kicked off in Hyderabad on Thursday.

"All the existing government buildings will be brought under the code through a performance contract model and we believe that this model can be used in both private and public sectors," he said.

Under a performance contract, an energy services company, which wins the order through a bidding process, needs to invest in installing energy efficient equipment, including lighting, water and ventilation. The ESCO will be paid from the savings throughout the contract period.

As a pilot, Mathur said, the BEE implemented energy efficiency improvement activities following an energy audit at Rashtrapati Bhavan in 2007. Tata Honeywell Limited had been selected as the ESCO for the five-year contract and the implementation had resulted in 20 per cent and 23 per cent energy savings in the first and second years respectively.

"This model proved to be successful and the BEE had implemented this in seven other government buildings, including Shram Shakti Bhavan and Transport Bhavan in New Delhi. Now, we plan to bring close to 300 government buildings, including 25 in Andhra Pradesh, for upgradation this calendar year," Mathur said.

Stating that the energy labelling of buildings, introduced in March 2009, received 63 applications from the office segment so far, of which 54 had received energy labels, Mathur said, "the government's goal is to allow all the existing buildings to have at least 1-star rating and enable new buildings to aspire for 4-star ratings."

Image: Greenpeace activists hold banners. | Photograph: Reuters