Decoupling in India’s building construction sector: trends, technologies and policies

ABSTRACT

India’s present development trajectory is at a crucial juncture with a requirement to meet the demands of a population of over 1.2 billion while ensuring environmental sustainability. The resulting economic growth over the past two decades has over-exploited finite natural resources and led to tremendous environmental degradation. Therefore, decoupling economic growth from resource consumption is crucial in the transformation towards a green economy. Building construction is one of the most resource-intensive sectors, as well as creating a high impact on the environment. This study analyzes existing mechanisms in India’s building construction sector that attempt to decouple economic growth from resource use and environmental impacts. The key contributors for decoupling are analyzed. Recommendations for regulations, market incentives, transparency, data monitoring and capacity-building are provided for an array of policy initiatives targeted at political and financial decision-makers at the national, state and local levels for different buildings.

KEYWORDS:

• building materials
• buildings
• climate change
• decoupling
• energy efficiency
• environmental performance targets
• material flow
• public policy
• resource efficiency
• India

Acknowledgement

Some of the information provided in this paper is an abridged version of findings based on three policy briefs in the series ‘Decoupling Energy and Resource Use from Growth in the Indian Building Construction Sector’. In addition to that, new data and analysis have been included with regard to Figures 1, 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8. The authors would like express their sincere gratitude to the referees, editor and guest editors of the special issue for offering their feedback and insights, which the authors have found to be extremely useful.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Based on the authors’ survey in 10 Indian cities.

2 This list is only indicative to support the study’s methodology in the absence of service sector data specific to energy consumption in buildings.

3 Includes both heating and cooling. Exact estimates of space cooling are not available.

4 Some commentators have compared this with a mafia-like approach to circumvent the rules.

Additional information

Funding

Research that led to the publication of this paper was supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in the framework of the projects ‘Strategic Environmental Dialogues’ [grant number: Contract number 81191091] and in kind support was received from ‘Urban Pathways’ project [grant number: 17_1_357_Global_A_Urban Pathways], both funded by the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), Germany.