Page 9 - Shelter - April 2023

THEME PAPER

water stress, droughts, and of climate action – it offers for all. This is a unique
deteriorating air quality. cost-effective opportunities and timely opportunity to
The built environment is for deep carbon reduction accelerate India’s leadership
the converging platform and drive co-benefits for the on global progress towards
where otherwise discrete human development index net zero embodied and
sectors of the economy by providing health-inducing operational emissions in the
become integrated, such spaces and a decent standard built environment and to
as residential, commercial, of living. help steer the world away
and institutional buildings, from a dangerous, potentially
appliances for cooling, This year India has taken catastrophic, climate trajectory.
ventilation and air quality, to the global stage with the
transportation, and energy G20 presidency, embracing In recent years, India’s GDP
infrastructure including the theme of Vasudahaiva is enjoying fast growth at
distributed energy resources, Kutumbakam or “One Earth, approximately a 5% annual
each with their associated One Family, One Future”, growth rate to reach 2.67
embodied and operational and guiding global actions trillion USD in 2020 (World
emissions. The COVID19 towards energy transitions to Bank, 2021). It is estimated
pandemic has drawn a sharp accelerate low-carbon growth that India’s GDP will grow
focus on the nexus between and promote an eco-friendly to 1.2 trillion USD by 2050,
the built environment and lifestyle. To drive towards approximately 5 times
health (Singh et al., 2021). this goal, there must be an increase from 2020. India is
Hence, in order to combat emphasis on decarbonisation also experiencing a rapid
climate change, it is critical to of the built environment, urbanisation process – 36%
develop policy, investment, electrification of aligned compared with 32.7% in 2015
and technology frameworks industrialised processes (World Bank, 2021), and 50.3%
focused on driving and end uses; solutions for by 2050. Figure 1 illustrates
decarbonisation of the built hard-to-decarbonize steel India’s projected per capita
environment. and cement production, GDP (IMF, 2016) and rural
and scaling emerging clean vs. urban population (Our
INTRODUCTION energy policy and technology World in Data, 2018). The
At the UN Climate Change deployment while serving triple effects of population,
Conference 2021, India’s for wellness and resilience urbanisation, and GDP
Prime Minister Narendra Figure 1 Urbanization and per capita GDP growth in India
Modi announced a target
of net zero emissions by 2070,
to reduce projected carbon
emissions by one billion tons
and the carbon intensity of
India’s economy by 45% by
2030 (MoEFCC, 2022). India’s
building sector alone accounts
for 33% of emissions for a total
of 907 million tons in 2020 (de
la Rue du Can et al., 2019).
Hence, built environment
decarbonisation is at the core (Source: Our World in Data, 2018)

April, 2023, Volume 24. No.1 - SHELTER 7