Demand for green buildings grows as health, environmental concerns rise

Backed by environmental regulation and rising awareness, green buildings in India are expected to grow from the current 1.7 billion sq feet to 3 billion sq feet by 2020.

New high-rise residential, schools, communities and mixed-use development are expected to be the top sectors driving the demand for green buildings.

“We have green building across 500-odd projects in India. We expect this to double in coming years as the demand for such buildings grows,” Mahesh Ramanujam, President and CEO of the US Green Building Council (USGBC), told

Ramanujam said India ranked third among the top 10 countries for LEED green building and in 2016, nearly 650 Indian building projects had earned LEED certification.

According to industry reports, buildings account for an estimated one third of global emissions and a green certification provides cost-effective solutions to climate change as such structures generate significant environmental, economic and societal benefits.

According to a Dodge Data and Analytics, global green buildings are expected to double every three years and India is a part of that trend.

The size of the green buildings materials market too is estimated to reach $234 billion by 2019. Green building programmes such as LEED have been significant drivers of market transformation across the globe.

Asked to elucidate the advantages of green buildings, Ramanujam said greens building commanded a premium asset value over traditional buildings.

“Given that low-cost housing is bound to see a huge growth in the next two decades and more than 60 per cent of India’s infrastructure yet to be built, residential and commercial property developers are now increasingly being prevailed upon to evolve and incorporate green features,” said a JLL report.

It said the demand for green office spaces is equally high among Indian corporates.

JLL also said that a large number of IT / ITES companies and BFSI firms have an explicit ‘green’ mandate when it comes to leasing commercial spaces.

Bank of America, Citibank, UBS, Inautix and Intuit are some of the firms that are firmly committed to occupy sustainable office spaces.