Energy Conservation Building Codes in India

The CEPT Research Colloquium recently held a talk by Rajan Rawal with the topic ‘Building Energy Codes in India: Opportunities, Challenges and Way Foreward’. Professor Rawal’s recent research work has focused on the subject of energy conservation and its application on the Urban Indian context. In a talk with him, he shared some of his published research work and findings with us.

The rapidly expanding building sector will add to the existing floor space through the country another 4 billion square meters by 2030, multiplying the power demand and creating an urgent need for power conservation.

Bureau of Energy Efficiency (B.E.E) was formed under Energy Conservation Act and with assistance from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) launched the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) with the goal of decreasing power consumption by 30-40%. Government of India launched the National Mission on Sustainable Habitat (NMSH) for ECBC implementation at local levels and aims at achieving 65% compliance by 2017.

ECBC has ninety building scenarios and baselines as characteristics of building with current practices for reference. Costs and savings are calculated for individual components and then accumulated and normalized to floor area.

For easy compliance ECBC developed three-tiered approach based on energy conservation measures (ECM) for evaluating savings over lifetime. For the subsequent tiers return on investment decreases, implementation difficulty increases and payback period decreases by implementing consecutive tiers.

The perspective approach specifies performance criteria for building materials. The Whole Building Performance method assesses building performance in EPI (Energy Performance Index, kWh/sq. m) using online user guide (ECOnirmaan).

Implementation is currently voluntary. The current administrative model has top down approach; GDCRs (general development and regulation) at local levels need modifications, approval by urban local bodies and amendments in bye-laws. BEE appoints Third Party Assessors for compliance check and quality assurance bodies to check the third-party administrator’s work.

ECBC’s recognition by awards to motivate adoption, incorporation within design, standardization of new professional requirements, specialized domain expertise, skill improvement and assistance for incompetent developers are needed for greater outreach.

Rajan Rawal is the project coordinator in Center for Advanced Research in Building Science & Energy (CARBSE) at CEPT university.

This article was originally published on CEPT Portfolio.

Header Image: Flickr user something ho