Hyderabad – Indian Green Building Council registrations have passed 19,820 projects covering 16.20 billion square feet, and from 1 May 2026 every new application must meet a tougher version of its rating system.
Projects seeking pre-certification or certification must now follow version 4.0 of the Green New Buildings Rating System. Tightening a rating standard is routine. It matters here because certification has become a commercial input rather than a plaque.
Three systems, different purposes
The Indian Green Building Council, established by the Confederation of Indian Industry in 2001, dominates private development across tier one and tier two cities. GRIHA, developed by The Energy and Resources Institute with the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and adopted by government in 2007, is the national tool and is mandatory for central government buildings. LEED carries international recognition that matters to multinational tenants.
All three assess energy, water, materials, site and indoor environmental quality. All three treat the Energy Conservation Building Code and Eco-Niwas Samhita as prerequisites rather than achievements.
The code is the floor and it is unevenly enforced
The Energy Conservation Building Code applies to commercial buildings above 100 kW connected load in notified states. Notification is a state decision, and enforcement capacity at municipal level varies enormously.
The result is a market where voluntary certification is often stricter than mandatory code, because certification is checked by a body with a reputation to protect and the code is checked by a building department with a queue.
Why tenants now care
A multinational occupier subject to its own reporting obligations counts leased space inside its emissions boundary. It needs building energy data from its landlord, and increasingly writes that into the lease.
That converts certification from marketing into leasing risk, which is why Indian real estate investment trusts have moved on it faster than the code required.
Source: Indian Green Building Council rating system documentation and registration data, GRIHA Council, and Bureau of Energy Efficiency building code notifications.
