Centre to audit commercial buildings' energy efficiency launched

In tune with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 100 smart cities programme, a centre to audit energy consumption of existing comercial buildings in the country was made operational Wednesday.

The centre will gauge the buildings' potential to reduce the energy consumption while turning the buildings energy efficient while conforming to one of the key components of smart urbanisation.

The Centre of Excellence for Energy Efficient Buildings was launched by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in association with United Technologies Corporation (UTC) to make commercial and non-government buildings more energy efficient and eco-friendly.

"This initiative is timely. The centre would feed into the union government's ambitious programme of smart cities, TERI director Mili Majumdar said.

Growing at a rate of eight percent annually, the energy consumption of the building sector in India is approximately 35 percent of the nation's total energy consumption.

The centre intends to ramp down this consumption, predicting a 20-30 percent of reduction.

"Given the trend of rapid urbanisation and the energy challenges faced by the nation, energy efficiency in the buildings sector is an important priority," said Zubin Irani, president of the Building and Industrial Systems India, UTC.

The centre intends to develop a framework to report an existing building's energy use, evaluate its energy rating system, design tools and techniques for energy management, and identify cost benefit analysis of conservation measures.

In a video message, TERI director general R.K. Pachauri said: "We hope that this will be a model not only for this country but for other countries as well."