Govt to evolve green building code soon

CII to help disseminate best building practices

The Andhra Pradesh government will evolve a green building code for the government as well as the private buildings in the state.

The state government will take the help of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in formulating the code as well as disseminating the best building practices in the world.

A green building is one that is environmentally responsible and a healthy place to live and work. Green buildings ensure that waste is minimised at every stage during the construction and operation of the building resulting in low costs.

Chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy announced the government's decision to encourage green buildings while inaugurating the two-day 'International Conference on Green Buildings' here today.

He said that the green building concepts would result in optimum utilisation of water, energy and other resources which were increasingly becoming scarce.

He also said that in view of the persistence of drought conditions in the state, the government was also taking steps to encourage bio-fuel plantations and bio-diesel industry in the state.

Earlier, Jamshyd N Godrej, chairman of CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre, stressed that the governments needed to make the green building practices mandatory at least for their own facilities and also incentivise the same to encourage the industry.

The CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre constructed a building near the Hi-Tec City here as per the best green building practices in the world.

In November last year, the centre bagged the platinum certification, which is the highest rating for any green building in the world.

Mentioning this, Godrej said the Platinum rating had sensitised the construction industry on the need for adoption of green building practices. He appealed to the state government to make use of the CII expertise, to which the chief minister readily agreed.

On the occasion, the CII-Sohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre and US Green Building Council (USGBC) announced their tie-up to exchange information on the latest developments of buildings in their respective countries.

USGBC will help the Indian Green Business Building Council, which is part of the CII Green Business Centre, to evolve 'LEED India' rating programme. LEED (leadership in energy and environmental designs) is a popular rating system of the USGBC based at Washington.