India's first green stadium awarded

Delhi's Thyagaraj Stadium was Friday awarded the CII-Indian Green Building Council's (IGBC) gold rating, making it the first green stadium in the country, officials said.

Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Director General Chandrajit Banerjee and IGBC Chairman Prem C. Jain presented a gold-rated plaque and a certificate to Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit at a felicitation programme organised here.

"This remarkable achievement has consolidated Delhi's leadership role in its efforts in greening the country. This would encourage other states in the country to go green," Dikshit said.

"The need of the hour is to focus on promoting energy efficiency green buildings that would address all these environmental issues and concerns," she added.

Built from scratch at a cost of Rs.300 crore (Rs.3 billion/$65 million), the south Delhi stadium was built for the Commonwealth Games the city hosted Oct 3-14, 2010.

Some key green features incorporated in the stadium include: solar and gas-based power generating systems, rainwater harvesting, effluent treatment plant, use of recycled water for flushing in toilets, etc.

According to Jain, with over 2,100 green-building projects spread over 1.52 billion square feet of green building footprint registered with CII-IGBC, India is among the top three countries with largest green building footprint in the world.