Meeting the energy needs

There has been no attempt at the national level to draft guidelines for energy conservation. A look by D. Ajitha Simha

The demand for energy from several sectors of the economy is increasing and the matching capacity of energy production is also slowly increasing. However there is a substantial gap between supply and demand.

The construction sector in particular has a huge demand on energy. It can be taken to include broadly the building sector, the transportation sector and the irrigation sector.

Dealing with the building sector as a whole, there has been no attempt at the national level to draft guidelines for energy conservation. The building sector is expected to consume around 50 per cent of a total Five-Year Plan outlay.

Classification

Buildings are classified as below by the National Building Code (NBC) prepared by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) at the national level:

a) Residential;

b) Educational;

c) Institutional;

d) Assembly;

e) Business;

f) Mercantile;

g) Industrial;

h) Storage;

i) Hazardous.

Therefore it is necessary to deal with all these occupancies at one go instead of dealing with only commercial buildings in connection with energy conservation.

In recent times attempts are being made by a few organisations to conserve energy in the building sector. The Bureau of Energy Efficiency under the Ministry of Power issued an Energy Conservation Building Code in 2007. But this is largely based on available Indian standards published by BIS. One of the IS dealing with broad division of the country based on atmospheric conditions, namely, hot and humid, dry, wet and so on into five categories has not been considered.

According to The Hindu PropertyPlus supplement of November 29, the Kerala Government is understood to be considering such a code. The position in other States is not clear. Therefore, in order not to dissipate energy in preparing codes by different Ministries and States, it seems reasonable to propose that BIS should undertake this task on an urgent basis involving all the stakeholders.

A building has three major disciplines — civil, electrical and mechanical — and they are available with the BIS. It has also prepared the National Electric Code which, along with NBC, is used by all States and respective government departments at the Centre.

Wind energy

In today’s construction activities huge amounts are being invested in high-rises for both residential and commercial purposes. This opportunity may be taken to generate wind power by installing the equipment needed on top of these towers. The wind power so generated can supplement the energy demand of these occupancies.

Therefore it is suggested that the BIS be asked to undertake this work.

The writer is U.N. Consultant on Building Codes