Sustainable Production and
Consumption in Housing  

It has been estimated that in India 60 million new homes will need to be built between 2018 and 2024 (Bloomberg, 2017) which is set to trigger a $1.3 trillion investment by the Indian real estate market. This boom has been propelled by the Indian Prime Minister’s vision to provide housing for all by 2022 through slum rehabilitation with participation of private developers using land as a resource, promotion of affordable housing for EWS through credit linked subsidy and in partnership with public and private sectors and subsidy for beneficiary-led individual house construction.

Production of Housing

Despite the growth in demand for affordable housing that has been observed, 90% of this supply in India is coming from small and informal developers (FSG, 2018). The recent study published by FSG titled, State of Low-Income Housing Finance Market, 2018, has stated that the lending capacity of affordable housing finance companies in India has already grown manifold, over the five years, thus facilitating the ownership of more than 230,000 affordable homes (Das, Karamchandani, & Thuard, 2018).

Investment in housing always results in inter-industry linkages and thus creates strong multiplier effects by the generation of income and employment. A unit increase in final expenditure on the construction sector would help to create additional income for the economy as a whole. Any further investment in the housing sector has an employment multiplier effect of 8 indicating that it induces an overall employment generation in the economy eight times the direct employment generated by the sector itself (NCAER, 2014).

Construction and real estate contribute nearly one-fifth of India’s GDP. In terms of employment during 2009-10, a little over 616 lakh workers were engaged in the construction sector and another 7.6 lakh in real estate.

Life Cycle Approach

The UNEP defines the life cycle approach as a process through which we recognise how our choices influence what happens at each of these points so we can balance trade-offs and positively impact the economy, the environment and the society (UNEP, 2004). Contrary to popular notion, it not only allows for a comprehensive quantitative approach (i.e., life cycle assessment studies), but also a qualitative approach (life-cycle thinking of processes and institutions). The figure below illustrates the different stages that are followed for a building product - from the extraction of the raw materials to make the product, to the final demolition and disposal of waste.

When talking of applying the life-cycle approach to a building, it refers to the assessment of the whole process of building within the system boundaries of the manufacturing building materials to demolition of the building and disposal of waste material. It has been estimated that the use phase in conventional buildings represents approximately 80% to 90% of the life-cycle energy use, while 10% to 20% is consumed by the material extraction and production and less than 1% through end-of-life treatments (Sartori & Hestnes, 2007).

As can be inferred from the above estimates, while only 10-20% of the life-cycle energy is consumed by the material extraction and production, the initial design process is a critical component that defines how the life-cycle energy will be consumed during the entire life-span of the building.

Consumption of Housing

The construction of houses and the associated infrastructure are a part of the production system, which also creates consumption of considerable volume and with considerable environmental consequences, on the part of the households which live in the houses (Hoyer & Holden, 2001). This can be associated with the post-occupancy consumption that not only is influenced by household behaviour but also the design of the housing production system. There are two specific categories of consumption which are influenced by physical planning at a local level (Naess, 1997):

• Heating and cooling of homes – Thermal performance

• Local transport (journeys under 30km) – Spatial planning

Resource Consumption

In another aspect, the Indian construction industry is estimated to be one of the largest consumers by volume of raw materials/natural resources and construction materials/products manufactured. Reddy has estimated in his assessment of energy consumption of materials that the total energy expenditure on these materials is 3155x106 GJ per annum, which further is estimated to be 22% of the total GHG emission contribution in India (Reddy B. V., 2009).

Thus relating back to the life- cycle approach, the design stage is the critical stage which eventually defines the production of sustainable building materials and technologies and thereby the consequential sustainable consumption by the households.

The housing sector has positive effects on the socio-economic conditions of the country. However this sector is also responsible for consuming a whole range of materials that influences the resource footprint (Roychowdhury, 2011). Adapting from the life-cycle thinking, the public policies around the housing sector in India need to address both the production as well as the consumption side of the housing problem.

On 28th of August, 2018 the EU funded SWITCH-Asia programme, in particular its SCP Facility, in collaboration with Development Alternatives, conducted a multi-stakeholder dialogue with key stakeholders, to deliberate on the concept of sustainable consumption and production in the Indian context and its linkage to sustainable housing in India.

A clear reflection of the participants of the consultation was that in India there was a need for larger efforts to be put into implementation of the proposed initiatives and less on the already existing robust policies of the country.

The discussions emphasised that the housing sector needs to address holistically, both the supply, i.e., sustainable production as well as the demand, i.e., sustainable consumption aspects as well as moving away from single buildings approach to the sets of community buildings - the tree versus the forest approach. ■

References:
Bloomberg. (2017, May 9). $1.3 Trillion Housing Boom Set to Be India's Next Growth Driver: Catalyst will be government's affordable housing push . Retrieved from www.bloomberg.com: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-22/trump-makes-multiple-gaffes-portraying-chevrolet-as-trade-victim
Citherlet, S. (2001). Towards the Holistic Assessment of Building Performance Based on an Integrated Simulation Approach . Lausanne : EPFL.
Das, C., Karamchandani, A., & Thuard, J. (2018). State of the Low-Income Housing Finance Market 2018. FSG & NHB.
FSG. (2018, May 30). Approaches for reaching underservved income groups and underwriting informal earners- experience from India . Retrieved from www.livemint.com: https://www.livemint.com/Companies/5YoNp50TR79CUmXYmbsMBO/Affordable-housing-90-of-low-cost-homes-built-by-informal.html
Hoyer, K. G., & Holden, E. (2001). Housing as basis for sustainable consumption. International Journal for Sustaianble Development, 4(1), pp. 48-58.
Laven, C. S. (2014, November 14). 4 ways to make housing more affordable . Retrieved from www.weforum.org : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2014/11/4-ways-to-make-housing-more-affordable/
McKinsey Global Institute . (2014). A blueprint for addressing the global affordable housing challenge . McKinsey & Company.
Naess, P. (1997). Physical Planning and Energy Use. Tano Aschehoug.
NCAER. (2014). Impact of Investments in the Housing Sector on GDP and Employment in the Indian Economy. National Council of Applied Economic Research.
Reddy, B. V. (2009). Sustainable materials for low carbon buildings. International Journal of Low-Carbon Technologies, 4, 175-181.
Roychowdhury, A. (2011). Buildings: Earthscrapers. New Delhi: Centre for Science and Environment.
Sartori, I., & Hestnes, A. (2007). Energy use in the life cycle of conventional and low-energy buildings: A review article . Energy and Buildings 39, 249-257.
UNEP. (2004). Why Take A Life Cycle Approach? UNEP.

Pratibha Caleb
pcaleb@devalt.org