Page 12 - Shelter - April 2023

THEME PAPER

Figure 3 A vision for a zero-carbon built environment promoting equitable important processes
wellness and resilience through a framework of the three drivers Decarbonise, include decarbonised
Democratise, Digitalise. energy-intensive steel and
cement manufacturing,
and carbon capture,
utilisation and storage
(CCUS) at cement plants,
and harnessing carbon
storage potential in
buildings.
2. Reduction in operational
carbon: Operational
energy reduction requires
progressive approach
(Figure 5) that has been
(Source: Singh, Mani, Joshi, 2021)
shown to provide ~75%
the Indian built environment integrating accessible and reduction in the use of
by 2050. Decarbonisation affordable low-carbon active energy in high-
represents the largest and materials, methods, and performing commercial
most cost-effective levers for building assemblies. buildings. This
climate action and approaches Figure 4 shows embodied progressive approach
and includes approaches as and operational energy enables deep reductions
detailed below: for various building in capital expenses for
typologies. Approaches to renewables required to
1. Reduction in embodied reduce embodied carbon deliver net zero energy
carbon: Solutions to reduce include locally sourced buildings; entails the
embodied carbon rely and re-utilized/ up- use of passive design
on standards, labelling cycled materials, biogenic to reduce active energy
and green procurement resources, and structural demand for space
of low carbon materials, alternatives. The most cooling, lighting, and

Figure 4: Embodied and operational energy for various building typologies appliances; improving
(Mani & Reddy, 2012) energy equipment,
monitoring and controls
to reduce energy demand
and waste; addressing the
reduced energy demand
using decarbonized
energy sources, and
implementing flexible
building-to-grid
management.

3. Reduction in resource
use and waste through
circularity of building
materials and energy flows.

10 HUDCO-HSMI Publication