Bridging India’s housing gap: lowering costs and CO₂ emissions

Abstract

More than 60 million homes in India are unfit for decent living. Replacing this stock with decent housing will entail significant costs and increase energy consumption and related CO 2 emissions due to both upfront and long-term energy requirements. This paper assesses the life cycle costs (LCC), life cycle energy (LCE) and CO 2 emissions impacts of filling the current housing gap with different building materials and technologies, and maintaining reasonable standards of indoor temperature and humidity. These outcomes are assessed under different climatic conditions and residential behavioural patterns, using urban and rural housing archetypes, and considering conventional as well as low-cost materials and energy-savings measures. The results demonstrate that stabilized-earth blocks are a preferred solution to the prevailing norm of fired bricks. Along with filler slab and roof insulation, they offer a win-win solution to reduce both LCC by 18% and LCE by 17% compared with conventional techniques in bridging the housing gap. LCE savings can be further increased to 28% without increasing the investment cost compared with conventional solutions. The insights provided by this study on abatement costs and efficacy can be used by policy-makers for affordable housing and climate-related policies.

The state of earthen housing worldwide: how development affects attitudes and adoption

“…Comparing the adoption trajectories with a business-as-usual approach (Figure 13), successful adoption of high-quality earthen dwellings at the medium and high development stages offers the potential to displace large amounts of non-earthen construction. This could potentially have large net benefits for housing affordability and embodied impacts of construction, as has been modelled for India (Mastrucci & Rao, 2019). Such a strategy would also be in line with another target of SDG 11, to encourage 'building sustainable and resilient buildings utilizing local materials'.…”

A Framework for Modelling Consumption-Based Energy Demand and Emission Pathways

“…In the REF scenario, we keep the characteristics of new housing unaltered over time. In the LCT scenario, we incorporate energy-efficient building design that reduces both construction and operational energy requirements 51 and material efficiency improvements for steel and other construction materials.…”

“…The DLS for housing include minimum floor surface (10 m 2 per person, minimum 30 m 2 up to 3 persons), permanent construction materials and a suitable level of thermal comfort. , We represent rural and urban housing by a single-story and a multi-story archetype respectively, reflecting prevailing construction practices, − and focus on construction and space cooling–heating only (appliances and other end uses are not considered). We rely on previous studies for the estimation of energy requirements for space cooling and heating under the five different climatic zones in India (see the Supporting Information).…”

Template for Evaluating Cradle-to-Site Environmental Life Cycle Impacts of Buildings in India

“…4−6 A massive amount of building construction is thus expected over the next few years in the country. 7,8 However, these schemes if not implemented following sustainability principles can have serious impacts on the environment, jeopardizing India's progress toward SDGs related to climate action, human health, and ecosystem damage. The building sector worldwide accounts for almost one-third of the total energy produced in the world from fossil fuels and global energy-related carbon emissions.…”