Dr R.K. Pachauri, Director-General, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), has urged builders to make buildings GRIHA (acronym for Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment) compliant in order to reduce emissions from them. The rating system conceived by TERI and developed in association with the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, is on par with Leeds certification but more suited to Indian conditions, he said.

Pointing out that buildings accounted for 40 per cent of the greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, the realty sector has the greatest potential for reducing emissions, Dr Pachauri said, adding that a green building was not a luxury, or a fancy of an environmentalist, but something that was necessary.

Since GRIHA was introduced, 160 green building projects totalling 7.5 million sq m have been registered under it. Eight of these have received certification, and another eight that will be certified this year. Dr Pachauri called Pune the “cradle of green building movement,”, and said the city had been a trailblazer and set its sights on becoming the green capital of the world. Currently, 20 projects are under way in Pune and the Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, which incidentally, has made it mandatory for all new projects to conform to GRIHA.

It was erroneous to believe that mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions is expensive, he said, observing that this would at most postpone GDP growth by one year over the medium term. “The cost of inaction both in ecological and human terms will be unbearable.”

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