India’s Green Buildings

I read about the Green Buildings in a newsletter that I receive. It had some interesting data on the Green buildings in India. Among cities it is Chennai and amongst corporates it is Wipro that are leading the way for Green buildings in India. Incidentally Bangalore has none till now, in spite of its reality boom.

City	Name of Green Building
Chennai	Olympia Technology Park
	ETL BPO Park
	Vestas India Pvt Ltd
	World Bank
	Grundfos Pumps India Pvt Ltd
	ABN Amro Central Enterprise
	L&T
	Rane Institute of Employee Dev.
Gurgaon	Wipro - Gurgaon Dev. Centre
	ITC Green
NOIDA	Spectral Services Consultants
Kolkata	Technopolis
Hyderabad	HITAM
	CII-Godrej Green Business Centre
Mumbai	Hiranandani BG Building
Kochi	Wipro - SDB 1
Gulbarga	IGP Office Complex

The typical features of green buildings are:
- Energy efficiency
- Water efficiency
- Use of recycled materials
- Waste management
- Building management systems
- Sustainable sitting
- Innovative design to achieve sustainability

In order to achieve the above, a series of nearly 30 design and technology measures need to be incorporated. By doing so, the green buildings provide health and safety benefits, environmental benefits and economic benefits. In all cases of green buildings, the costs of provision of various features provide a pay back in 4 to 7 years.

I did some basic search on this topic and found these interesting facts and the opportunities available for entrepreneurs in this space:

• According to Wikipedia, Green building is the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings use resources -- energy, water, and materials -- while reducing building impacts on human health and the environment, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and removal — the complete building life cycle.

• The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, provides a suite of standards for environmentally sustainable construction. Since its inception in 1998, LEED has grown to encompass over 14,000 projects in 50 US States and 30 countries covering 1.062 billion square feet (99 km²) of development area

• The Indian Green Building Counci is in the process of indigenising the LEED Green Building Rating System to suit India. They also have training programs for new construction. They also conduct examination for becoming IGBC accredited professional. You can find a list of certified professionals on the site. Parameters for LEED rating are available here.

• Green Business Centre discusses the business opportunities that exist in India for Green Buildings.

The world over, there are over 1,300 LEED certified projects and over 16,000 projects awaiting LEED certification. I guess this is a potential area that entrepreneurs can explore.