Policy-makers and designers must work to provide indigenous solutions for construction of buildings that are relevant for India, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday."Capital in India is scarce and it is expensive. In this situation it is very essential that policy makers and designers work to indigenise solutions, which are relevant to Indian situation," Goyal said.He was addressing an international conference here on Energy Efficient Building Design organised jointly by state-run Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)."For a country like India, our lighting, domestic and commercial business needs are indeed disproportionately high compared to other parts of the world. More so because we have a long way to go before income levels of people increase," he said.Underlining the need to adopt a modern building code, Goyal said this is required in a rapidly transforming Indian economy where a lot of building construction would be done in next few years.According to estimates, India has built only one-third of the buildings it would have by 2030, and thus there would be 200 per cent expansion, he added.Projections done by NITI Aayog show that consumption in residential buildings is expected to increase ten-fold through 2047.
"The residential sector will become the largest consumer of electricity in the country with a 39 per cent share of the total electricity consumed in 2047," the SDC said in a release here.The three-day conference is being held under the aegis of the Indo-Swiss Building Energy Efficiency Project being implemented by BEE and SDC.Inaugurating the conference, Goyal also launched the Design Guidelines for Energy-Efficient Multi-Storey Residential Buildings (Warm and Humid Climates) that provide comprehensive information on how to design energy-efficient multi-storey residential buildings."Drawing on Switzerland's experience and expertise in the buildings sector, we have been jointly promoting energy efficient buildings in India through sharing of best practices," Goyal said.Addressing the gathering, Daniel Ziegerer, Director of Cooperation, SDC, said: "The know-how provided to 18 projects -- 15 commercial and 3 residential -- with a built-up area of over 1.4 million square meters, has shown that energy savings between 25 and 40 per cent can be achieved without significantly increasing the upfront investment costs."