In most developing countries, the vast majority of the building stock of the future is still to be built, so there is a real opportunity to decouple economic growth from building energy use whilst ensuring comfortable conditions. The rising energy demand, and consequent carbon emissions, is seen as an explicit indicator of increasing prosperity in many developing countries. This trajectory has important consequences not just for global carbon emissions but for the ability of countries such as India to achieve its developmental goals. The per-capita energy use in India, driven by greater urbanization, is growing at an even faster pace at around 3.3 per cent per annum. This project directly addresses the problem of peak demand reduction by aiming to eliminate peak demand in buildings, where it is created.

Therefore, the major objective of the project is to decouple building energy use from economic growth in India through a new science of zero peak energy building design for warm climates. This will provide “thermal stress free” living conditions whilst minimizing mean and peak demand. The project aims to tackle climate change driven peak energy demand in buildings. The project will work majorly on improved building designs, low-energy cooling & heating, social practices of adaptive thermal comfort and post-occupancy evaluation in order to bring about peak demand reduction. It will also look at providing support through research to urban planning, and integration of information, communication and renewable energy technologies at building level.

Under the Joint India/UK DST-EPSRC on ‘Energy Demand Reduction in the Built Environment’, an Indo-UK consortium is working on addressing the problem of peak demand reduction by aiming to eliminate peak demand of power in buildings. The project is being led by IIT Roorkee with the consortium partners being CSIR-CBRI, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi from India and Bath University and UK Met office from the UK.

Principal Investigator (India)	:	Dr. E.Rajasekar, IIT Roorkee
Co-Investigators (IIT Roorkee)	:	Dr. D S Arya, Dr. Krishnan Murugesan, Dr. N.P. Padhy
Co-Investigators (CSIR-CBRI)	:	Dr. Ashok Kumar & Dr. L.P. Singh
Co-Investigators (IIT Delhi)	:	Dr. Sukumar Misra
Principal Investigator (UK)	:	Dr. Sukumar Natarajan
Co-Investigators (UK)	:	Prof. David Coley, Prof. James Davenport, Dr. Ian Walker, Dr. Nick McCullen, Dr. Stephen Allen
Address of Client	:	Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi, India
Duration of Project	:	February 2018 – January 2021
Project Funding – CSIR-CBRI	:	Rs. 117, 06,600/-