NEWS

The construction and housing sector will get a tad greener by the end of the next year. The government has decided to make it mandatory for new building to undertake energy efficient measures, rainwater harvesting and use recyled construction material in parts under the sustainable habitat mission of the national action plan on climate change. At present, several different norms exist for energy efficiency and water harvesting and are implemented with a great amount of variance across different cities. The government will turn them into a unified national standard so that they can be uniformly applied across the country. Realizing that urban development measures lie under state governments and not the Centre, the Union government plans to leverage the grants it makes under the JNNURM programme to get the states on board. The grants from the Centre under the massive urban development programme will have built in conditions to ensure that the national standards are incorporated in the bye-laws of cities utilizing the funds.