The Maharashtra State housing department has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to promote green housing.

The MoU is partly funded by IFC’s Eco-Cities Program and is expected to support the Maharashtra government in developing green building policies which would include providing technical assistance on specific policies along with their implementation.

The agreement aims to provide design support, green certification, identification of sustainable and scalable building materials and technologies and development of pilot projects.

Maharashtra aims to develop 1.94 million affordable housing units under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana – Urban (PMAY-U) mission by 2022. This will add 100 million square meters of floor space to the residential buildings sector. These new buildings will use approximately 360 billion MJ/year of embodied energy, 3.05 TWh/year of operational energy, and 1180 MLD (this is per day estimation) of water.  The Maharashtra government along with IFC is targeting 14.5 billion MJ reduction in embodied energy annually, 120 GWh reduction in operational energy per year and 50 million liter reduction in water consumption per day.

IFC’s Eco-Cities India program is a multi-year technical advisory program, established under the EU-India Cooperation on Clean Energy and Energy Efficiency. A climate-change focused initiative, the program is structured around five cities—Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, and Mumbai and Pune metropolitan regions. The program is designed to assist government and civil society in meeting efficiency targets, such as the nationally determined contributions—the pledged reductions in emission levels and increased focus on climate-resilient development.

In July 2017, the IFC announced that it would invest over $1 billion to develop green buildings in India.

Recently, Mercom reported on a survey conducted by Johnson Controls, that stated India has only four percent of the building that can be classified as ‘green,’. The report also suggested that 38 percent of buildings in India want to get the ‘green building certification’ in the future as compared to the global percentage of 44. Around 46 percent are willing to pay a premium to lease space in a certified green building in India as compared to 51 percent in the world.

Shaurya is a staff reporter at MercomIndia.com with experience working in the Indian solar energy industry for the past four years in various roles. Prior to joining Mercom, Shaurya worked with a renewable energy developer and a consulting company. Shaurya holds a Bachelors Degree in Business Management from Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.