Revamped office to seek green building certificate

The revamp work in phase 1 has resulted in a 99.4 per cent decrease in the building’s electricity bill, from Rs 79,340 in May to Rs 433 in June; 100 per cent composting of wet waste, 100 per cent use of treated water from the in-house STP for flushing and gardening purposes.

In 2016, the state government made it mandatory for all new government-owned properties to be green buildings and all renovations in existing buildings were to be carried out in compliance with the same.

There are two agencies in India that certify buildings as green buildings. These are GRIHA (Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment)  and IGBC (Indian Green Building Council). Presently, 1,000 buildings in Mumbai have registered with IGBC for green building certification of which 100 are government-owned. About 270 buildings have already been given Green building certifications and 30 of these are government buildings. Under GRIHA, there are 35 certified Green buildings in the city at present.

In the second phase of work for the G/South ward office building, the BMC will implement measures to save energy and water, including retrofitting motion sensor lights and water taps, energy conserving lighting and installing an EV charging point. The civic body will also appoint a consultant for exploring what more can be done before registration. The tender for appointing the consultant was opened on Thursday to check for the lowest bidder. Work orders will be issued within a week, and work for the process will start in August, a senior civic official from G/South ward’s environment department said. The cost of the project is estimated to be Rs 1 crore.

Earlier this year, the BMC had appointed Sprout – Greening Ideas, a Green design consultancy firm, to examine if it was feasible to retrofit the existing ward office building for Green Building certification. Pranati Shroff from Sprout said, “There are five broad parameters for Green Building certification. We were able to create a design along these parameters and recommended a plan to the civic body.”

The five parameters are site, greening, soil management, water, rain water harvesting, treatment and recycling and conservation measures such as energy conservation, material used for the building and improved air quality through ventilation.