Green rating for integrated habitat (GRIHA)

About:

GRIHA has been conceived by the TERI and developed jointly with the ministry of new and renewable energy, government of India. The green building rating system devised by TERI and MNRE is a voluntary scheme.

• GRIHA is a Sanskrit word meaning- Abode.

Objective:

The primary objective of the rating system is to help design green buildings and, in turn, help evaluate the greenness of the buildings.

Aim:

The rating system aims to achieve efficient resource utilization, enhanced resource efficiency and better quality of life in the buildings.

Features:

The system has been developed to help design and evaluate new buildings.

A building is assessed based on its predicted performance over its entire life cycle – inception through operation.

The stages of the life cycle that have been identified for evaluation are;

Rating system:

The rating system consists of 34 criteria categorized under 4 categories. They are;

• Site selection and site planning
• Conservation and efficient utilization of resources
• Building operation and maintenance 
• Innovation points.

Benefits:

GRIHA seeks to benefit the community at large by bringing improvement in the environment by reducing GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, reducing energy consumption and the stress on natural resources. The benefits it offers include

• Lower energy consumption without compromising the comfort level
• Minimizing destruction of the Natural environment
• Lowering Environmental Pollution
• Reduced water consumption
• Limited waste generation due to recycling and reuse
• Reduced pollution loads
• Increased user productivity
• Enhanced image and marketability

Challenges in implementation of GRIHA

• Decentralized nature of the industry Design, construction, installation etc. is carried out in a fragmented manner as the industry lacks integration. This gives rise to difficulties in making holistic interventions for a building to ensure that it remains environment-friendly.
• Limited awareness about GRIHA initiative results in the meagre number of applications for GRIHA certification requests.
• High costs of climate-friendly technologies are another barrier that restricts people from adopting green building norms.
• Lack of stakeholder involvement, particularly Urban Local Bodies makes the ground level assessment and monitoring of building performance extremely difficult.

Rating Tool:

• GRIHA is a rating tool that helps people assess the performance of their building against certain nationally acceptable benchmarks and is suitable for all kinds of buildings in different climatic zones of the country.
• It attempts to quantify aspects such as energy consumption, waste generation, renewable energy adoption, etc. so as to manage, control and reduce the same to the best possible extent.
• It evaluate the environmental performance of a building holistically over its entire life cycle, thereby providing a definitive standard for what constitutes a Green building.
• The rating system based on accepted energy and environmental principles, will seek to strike a balance between the established practices and emerging concepts, both national and international.
• The guidelines/criteria appraisal may be revised every 3 years to take into account the latest scientific developments during this period.