‘National building code will have clauses to reduce power consumption’
All commercial buildings, especially malls, hotels and multiplexes that consume more than one million units of electricity a year would be given a target to reduce their power consumption by around 6%-7%, said officials attached to the Bureau of Energy Efficiency.
The union power ministry, in association with state governments, would soon survey and identify the buildings that fall under this category and targets would be fixed based on the building design.
A national building code or promotion of green buildings was always the key focus area of the power ministry to reduce energy consumption, said the director general of Bureau of Energy Efficiency B P Pandey. “”We will bring in a national building code with clauses for commercial buildings that consume more than one million units of electricity a year to bring it down by 6%-7% initially,” he said.
Pandey said individual targets would be fixed for each building based on its design. “If a building has already taken energy saving measures and falls under green building category, its target will be low,” he said, adding, “The process to audit, survey, identify and notify such buildings has already begun.”
The law, he said, allows us to make a code, which the state governments can adopt. 10 states have already adopted the code as buildings were under the state government’s purview.
Pointing out that the country had consumed almost 1.1 trillion units of electricity in 2015-’16 fiscal, Pandey said, “Even if we manage to reduce the overall power consumption by 2%, we would save 22 billion units and its cost.” He was in the city to conduct a workshop on promoting energy efficiency and renewable energy at the Coimbatore Foundry Cluster on Friday.
The workshop was organised as part of the energy efficiency and renewable energy in selected MSME clusters in India project by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), in association with Bureau of Energy Efficiency.
Power consumption, Pandey said, could also be brought down by way of using energy efficient televisions, air-conditioners, transformers, refrigerators and tube lights, etc. Fans and lights constitute almost 25% of domestic electricity consumption, he said. “We are working with companies to achieve more industrial efficiency. We have established the star labelling system to help customers pick products that are more energy efficient,” Pandey said.
The Bureau of Energy Efficiency also urged more foundries to focus on the ways to reduce their energy consumption by setting up a dedicated staff or manpower for the same, besides embracing more energy efficient technology and machinery.
The workshop also saw inauguration of the first energy management centre in the Coimbatore cluster. “We have plans to set up similar centres in 12 other clusters in the country,” Pandey said.
Source:TOI
