International Green Construction Code to Drive Green Building Movement.
International Code Council has just released International Green Construction Code, a comprehensive Green Building Code which is expected to bring about paradigm shift in the way Green Building are being constructed. This would also spur other nations to review their national codes and come out with some revisions.
ICC had collaborated to write the code with the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating & Air-Conditioning Engineers, the U.S. Green Building Council, and the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America. ICC and ASHRAE have had a long association and have provided the road-map for construction of high quality Green Buildings in the US.
The highlight of IGCC is the inclusion of ANSI/ASHRAE/USGBC/IES Standard 189.1, “Standard for the Design of High Performance, Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings,” as an alternate path of compliance.
ASHRAE Standard 189.1 is a set of technically rigorous requirements, which covers criteria for water use efficiency, indoor environmental quality, energy efficiency, materials and resource use, and the building’s impact on its site and its community.
Though Air-Conditioning is a major energy guzzler in the buildings and recommended control measures have resulted in vast savings in terms of energy performance index (EPI) , yet it sometimes appear that Green Building movement would have been better addressed and controlled in case architects had taken much sturdier role. Architects should have been made the proponent of this IGCC.
Countries like India have take small steps in form of their BEE led ECBC. The standards and codes are in the process of maturing and developing. Most commercial buildings have energy performance index (EPI) of 200 to 400 kWh/sq m/year . Similar buildings in North America and Europe have EPI of less than 150 kWh/sq m/year .
Energy-conscious building design has been shown to reduce EPI to 100 to 150 kWh/sq m/year in India – development of such buildings is restricted to environmentally-sensitive corporates. Other players, specially builders are expected to take cue from happenings US and Europe. They must shed their shortsightedness on increased development cost. Buyers of residential properties would also have to be willing to pay a wee bit extra for the environment and for our future generations.
May also like to read: Why Every New Building Should Mandatorily be Green.
