Mainstreaming Green Buildings: Telangana’s New Online System
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund
Buildings codes saves lives. Not only do they keep buildings from falling down or burning up, but they save far more lives by reducing energy use, which in turn reduces the need to burn polluting fuels like coal to make electricity. Air pollution is responsible for 4.5 million premature deaths every year, of which 2.5 million occur in India.
It makes international news if 100 people die in a building collapse. But think about this: it would take three such tragedies every hour day and night all year to equal the number of Indian deaths from air pollution.
Reducing energy use in buildings reduces this pollution and its consequent loss of life. It also produces better buildings: buildings that are more comfortable and facilitate higher productivity among workers and better learning performance in schools.
That’s why what’s going on in Telangana is so compelling. The city of Hyderabad in Telangana recently debuted a new online compliance system that builders can use to meet a groundbreaking city energy efficiency building code, and put up highly energy efficient buildings. This is a model that other Indian cities could adopt soon, saving consumers money, while reducing harmful air pollution and dangerous power outages.
Compliance with the technical provisions of the energy code is not difficult or expensive. But in the past, demonstrating compliance to local government has been more painful than necessary. But now this is all changed, at least in Telangana. Today compliance documentation can be submitted on-line, which results in less paperwork and faster issuance of permits.
The way it was: In Telangana, as in most places worldwide, buildings are required to meet numerous types of building codes: structural codes, fire safety codes, plumbing codes, and energy codes, among others. In the past, each code required a separate application, made on paper. The same building would have to enter the same information and the same technical data in numerous blanks on multiple forms. Often, the permit application would go from agency to agency, so that the processing time accumulated as each agency had to wait for the previous approval.
The new way: the approval process in Telangana departs from this 19th century-style approach and moves to a method more aligned with Hyderabad’s high-tech image. Complying with the energy efficiency building code compliance is done by uploading data to an on-line system. Instead of filling in the same boxes on different forms multiple times, data is entered just once: not just for the energy code but for all codes. Each department is able to review the compliance data separately so the applicant is not waiting for the plumbing experts to review the piping in order for the lighting energy experts to review the lighting and daylighting systems.
A side benefit is that the new system strengthens compliance efforts and includes incentives through the star rating program. Unlike most energy codes, which are met on a pass-fail basis, the Telangana ECBC has a star-rating program that is integrated with the compliance system – similar to the national star-rating program by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency. If the building barely complies, it is given one star. If it uses the performance method of compliance and saves additional energy beyond the minimum it is given two or more stars.
NITI Aayog’s Yogna Bhavan with the BEE 5-star building efficiency rating during a site visit by the NRDC team
©David B. Goldstein: NRDC, 2017
This system allows building owners or operators to compete on the basis of energy efficiency. It is also the first step in allowing energy efficiency savings in rupees to contribute to the capital value of the building, so that the efficiency can be seen as enhancing the building’s value as well as cutting utility bills, as Principal Secretary Navin Mittal, Telangana Municipal Administration & Urban Development, emphasized as a key motivation of the new system.
This effect on competition is important: in cities or in circumstances when the energy use of a building is made transparent, both builders and operators reduce energy use to distinguish themselves in the market. The star system can be expected to produce buildings that often do better than code even without any specific legal requirement to do so.
We have seen this result in places where transparency is required, either by law or through competitive forces. In Australia, in cities such as New York, and in much of new housing construction in the United States, labeling of building energy performance results in substantial energy savings beyond those expected from minimal compliance with codes.
Telangana is leading the way in how codes are implemented, helping to save lives through reduced air pollution and cool roofs that reduce heat stress.
Read the full article at: https://www.nrdc.org/experts/david-b-goldstein/mainstreaming-green-buildings-telanganas-new-online-system
