Impact of the national building rating system on electricity demand of India

Abstract

The building sector is one of the biggest consumers of electricity in India. Climate change and global warming, as one of the most serious risks to human societies, are inextricably linked to energy usage and Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). With a population of nearly 1.38 billion, India is the world’s second largest country. The majority of Indian urbanization is involuted rather than evolved. Between 1991 and 2011, the urban population expanded by 73 percent, from 217 million to 377 million, while energy demand more than doubled from 1990 to 2009. GRIHA — Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment is an indigenous building rating system developed by Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Govt. of India. GRIHA is a rating system that compares the building’s performance to nationally accepted benchmarks. It assesses a building’s environmental performance over the course of its full life cycle. With annual electricity consumption data for both residential and commercial sectors of India, with the linear regression methodology, the electricity demand till the year 2050 was plotted. Similarly, using the data from the GRIHA council and the Reference Building model, the annual electricity savings for GRIHA certified buildings has been plotted. Using non-linear regression, the savings for the years 2030 and 2050, has been plotted. The results show a positive indication that with stricter implementation of the energy conservation policies similar to GRIHA, by the govt of India, there can be significant savings in the energy Sector.

Keywords

• Climate change
• Green house gas emissions
• Energy demand
• GRIHA