The document discusses governance challenges around improving building energy efficiency in Indian cities, as buildings account for over 30% of the country's electricity use. While India has implemented multiple building energy programs and codes over the past decade, energy performance outcomes remain weak due to a lack of coordination between different levels of government, limited government capacity, and disconnected energy and climate agendas. The document argues for a more holistic socio-technical approach to building energy efficiency that strengthens linkages across different levels of governance and stakeholders.

1. Governance for Efficient
Buildings
in Indian Cities
Radhika Khosla, Centre for
Policy Research
WRI Connect Karo
April 2017

2. Outline
• Context
• Locating buildings within cities and the
energy-climate context
• Mapping building energy policy and governance
• Examining building energy outcomes
• Looking ahead

3. Cities as sites of energy
consumption
• Structural transitions in India’s cities
• 200 million moving to urban centres in next 20 years
• Investment of $1 trillion in infrastructure over the
12th Plan period
• By 2050, floor area in India will escalate by 400%
• “Growth engines”: 75% of GDP from cities in next 15
years
• Resulting new interconnected relationships
• Population, development, socio-environmental, climate
change impacts
• Challenges require different tools
• Restructuring economies, ways of life, new

4. Locating buildings within city
planning
• Buildings >30% of economy’s electricity use
• Increasing access to housing and electricity
• 2/3rds of commercial + high-rise residential buildings in
2030 yet to be built (2010)
• Buildings significant contributor to India’s carbon
emissions
• Paris Agreement opens new spaces for mitigation action in
national energy contexts
• Urbanization process preshapes available action space
to prevent lock-in
• Path dependencies from long lifetime of buildings of ~50
years
• Lock-in risk of final energy use in buildings (for space
heating and cooling) in India is 414% by 2050 (US — 53%;
China — 63%)

5. Timeline of building energy
programs
Source: Khosla et al. (2017)

6. Energy outcomes over ten years
• Weak energy performance metrics in spite of
multiple activities
• Energy Performance Index ~200-400 kWh/sqm/yr (efficient
building ~100 kWh/sqm/yr)
• 7 of 35 Indian states/UTs notified the building
code after almost a decade
• Most states in process of code notification, yet to
see wide implementation
• Small segment of private developers adopt
efficiency technologies
• Most activities flow top-down (international →
national → subnational)

7. Why weak energy outcomes?
1. Lack of harmonization and accountability
in institutional structure
Town Development Offices
Town planning offices include provisions
into local bye laws
Ministry of Power: Bureau of Energy Efficiency
Develops ECBC
Ministry of Urban Development
Responsible for the building guidelines and approval
processes
NationalLevelStateLevelLocalLevel
Energy Department
Provides technical support for ECBC
implementation
Public Works
Department
Urban Development Department
Develops state development control
regulations
Electrical Inspectorate
Department
KREDL (SDA)
Administers ECBC
Architecture
Division
(KT ECBC
Cell)
Engineering
Division
City Corporation
Urban local Bodies (Municipality)
Updates municipal building byelaws to be
complaint with ECBC
• Policy push from BEE
level
• Overlapping
responsibilities +
poor coordination
between levels
• Notification:
coordination
between national
(MoP)-state (UDD)
but UDD usually
coordinates w/MoUD
• Post notification, Illustrative ECBC governance map for Karnataka

8. 2. Constraints of capacity
• Capacity often emphasized, but current capabilities do
not mirror requirements for transformation of a major
sector
• BEE master trainers often not offered opportunities to
use acquired skills
• State and local bodies require numbers and training for
implementation and monitoring
• 80% of SDAs share MNRE and MOP objectives, political
economy of the SDA results in little interest in EE
• Often the number of officials within the SDA to
handle ECBC issues is less than 5 persons/state
Why weak energy outcomes?

9. 3. Interacting energy and climate change agendas
across multiple levels of governance
• Disconnected agendas
• at international level, discussions are climate
driven
• at national level, concern is development, energy
security, with some climate attention
• for the states, motivation is managing energy
supplies and peak load
• the local level is largely insulated from energy or
climate debates
• E.g. of is the absence of buildings in most states’
climate plans
Why weak energy outcomes?

10. Changing the status quo
• Policy programs can assume that technologies/codes along
bring change
• Re-think buildings efficiency from a technical problem
to a socio-technical problem:Technology and market access
Users and behaviour
• Individuals/households
• Organizations
Policies and governance
• Role of state departments
• Role of municipalities and
urban local bodies
Building
energy
efficiency

11. Looking Ahead
• Differentiated approach to capacity building
• Understand state-specific local needs and communicate
between states
• Organizational capacity to oversee local implementation
• For code implementation, progress driven by individual
leadership, not compliance structures
• Strengthen linkages and agendas across national
and local levels
• How can the Energy and Urban Development Departments
work more closely together?
• Better links between state and local levels for outcomes
on the ground
• Better linkages within states -- network of state energy

12. Thank you
Radhika Khosla
Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi
radhika.khosla@gmail.com