The Indian Green Building Council will host a four–day international conference on ‘Futuristic green habitats and technologies’ at Chennai Trade Centre during October 24-26.

The 11th edition of Green Building Congress 2013 provides a platform for the stakeholders in the country’s construction industry to attend, share and network and explore new opportunities, according to S.Raghupathy, Executive Director of IGBC.

The Congress theme seeks to focus on the latest and emerging Green building concepts and technologies.

He told Business Line that the Green building movement is gathering pace with more and more companies and individuals enlisting their upcoming projects. India has emerged as one of the major players encouraging the Green building movement. In a little over 10 years, as on today there are 2205 projects which have been registered with an overall projected built up area of 1.64-billion sq.ft.

Of this, about 400 projects have been completed and the rest are expected to be completed over the next 3-4 years, he explained.

“The Council has set an internal target of having a registered base of over 5 billion sq.ft, with more than 1 billion sq.ft of completed projects, by the end of 2016-17. This will make India a leader in the Green building movement,” he said.

The cost of setting up green buildings is coming down every year. The difference between conventional building and a Green building, which was as high as 10-15 per cent a decade ago has come down to 4 per cent. This is much lower if you consider a large green housing complex. With the cost coming down, the payback time has also come down from 7-10 years to less than 2-3 years, he said.

Representatives from the Government, US Green Building Council, architects and material suppliers with their products are expected to partake in the conference.

>rishikumar.vundi@thehindu.co.in

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