Architects question CSE report on green buildings

Architects and the building industry have criticised the report by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on green buildings titled Building Sense and said it makes unfair comparisons and does not adopt a correct approach.

Data put out by the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) on energy consumption of large commercial buildings that were rated and awarded silver, gold and platinum rating, under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green rating programme, are grossly underperforming, the CSE report had said. Several of them could not qualify even for the one star label under the star labelling programme of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) that ranks buildings based on their energy efficiency when operational, according to the report.

However, S Raghupathy, Executive Director, CIIGodrej Green Business Centre said the interpretation of data was not correct and misleading. Office buildings should never be compared with IT buildings. The Energy Performance Index (EPI) concept developed by the BEE is presently available only for three types of buildings malls, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) centres and commercial offices.

One cannot compare an office building vis--vis data centers, malls, BPO showrooms, hospitals, and hotels etc., which are unique in their own ways. The report compares an 8-hour office building with other types of buildings, which is totally incorrect, Mr. Raghupathy said.

Clarifying the CSE report, Avikal Somvanshi, senior research associate, CSE said, BEE has developed EPI benchmarks for various building typologies based on which it awards star labels to buildings. It has rated 135 office buildings and 26 BPO buildings for energy efficiency so far.

The CSE has just compared the energy performance of IGBC-LEED rated buildings disclosed by IGBC on its website, and found gross under-performance, he said.

Questions were being raised about EPI not being right measure of judging energy, he said adding that the CSE had not framed these benchmarks and standards which were being questioned.

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Architects question CSE report on green buildings