New government buildings to comply with green norms

In a bid to fight climate change threats through improved energy efficiency, all new buildings of government and public sector undertaking (PSU) offices will have to follow green rating norms.

“This decision was taken by the Centre two days ago to ensure that buildings are environment-friendly, aiming to achieve high energy utilisation,” New and Renewable Energy Minister Farooq Abdullah said today at a function here.

He said all new buildings of government and PSUs will have to mandatorily comply with the requirement of at least “3 star-rating” under the Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment (GRIHA) scheme.

Abdullah was speaking at a conference organised by his ministry on the launch of GRIHA — a national energy-efficiency rating system, under which buildings will be rated for efficiency compliance by The Energy and Resources Institute.

The minister also added that all efforts would made for making such buildings comply with even higher ratings subject to the site condition.

“The ministry has incentivised the scheme to promote large-scale design and construction of green buildings. This includes reimbursement of registration fee, cash awards etc,” said Deepak Gupta, secretary of the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), who was also present on the occasion.

MNRE has already modified provisions of the scheme to exempt 100 government and PSU buildings from paying registration and rating fee in advance.