16 commercial building spaces can save 8,960 Mwh/year: Study

Sixteen commercial building spaces, including that of Wipro, Tata Chemicals and Genpact, have the potential to save 8,960 megawatt hours a year, which is sufficient to power 2,400 rural homes, says a study.
Energy saving in 100 such buildings can power more than 12,000 rural homes, stated a energy audit report of 16 commercial buildings across the country by The TERI Centre of Excellence, launched by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and United Technologies Corp (UTC) in 2014.
"The results of these audits show a total potential energy savings of 8,960 megawatt hours in a given year, and it is estimated that the saved energy can power up to 400 urban or 2,400 rural homes," Teri said.

"Extrapolating the same to the 100 existing buildings that the Centre of Excellence is studying, energy savings will be sufficient to power more than 12,000 rural homes," it added.
The audited commercial spaces include offices, hospitals and hotels such as Genpact's spaces in Delhi/NCR and Jaipur; Wipro (Chennai); Tata Chemicals (Noida); Google (Hyderabad); India Habitat Centre (New Delhi); Kohinoor (Mumbai); Nanavati Hospital (Mumbai); Hinduja Hospital (Mumbai); BL Kapoor Hospital (New Delhi); PGI Hospital (Chandigarh), it said.
Located across at least three types of climatic zones -- hot and dry, composite, warm and humid -- the energy audit helped to identify the mechanisms that cause the heavy energy consumption and the tools required to minimise it, it added.

At the deliberations held today to celebrate the anniversary of the TERI Center of Excellence and address the challenges and opportunities of making existing buildings more energy efficient, stakeholders focused on the need to create financial models to implement appropriate measures in buildings.

They also addressed the results of the recent audits and discussed ways of improving mechanisms for measuring the energy performance of buildings.
Bureau of Energy Efficiency Director General Ajay Mathur said, "This country is going through a large building boom and an energy boom in those buildings. 60 per cent of the buildings that will exist in 2030 are yet to be built."

Thus, there is a "carbon cost" of it to the world. This Centre with its broad mandate can provide a huge amount of learning to the wider world in terms of a "communication, marketing and finance model as it becomes an integral part of how we move ahead," Mathur said.