TERI aids UNSW to establish urban living labs in India

The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) recently released its smart energy policy brief for cities at the fourth Australia-India Knowledge Exchange event held at University of New South Wales (UNSW).

The policy brief titled "Making Indian Cities Energy Smart" aims to help Indian cities manage energy footprints and influence future carbon emissions is one of the outcomes of a series of knowledge exchange workshops hosted by UNSW Built Environment and its Indian partners.

At the fourth workshop, senior director of the Sustainable Habitat Programme at TERI, Sanjay Seth, discussed the rapid urbanisation that is underway in India, and the need to revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development.

A result of the summit was that TERI was supporting UNSW in their grant application to the Australia-India Council to establish an urban living laboratory in an Indian city, seth said.

According to Deo Prasad, UNSW Scientia Professor, there were mutual benefits in UNSW's Cooperative Research Centre for Low Carbon Living (CRCLCL) developing a knowledge exchange partnership with Indian agencies and GRIHA (Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment).

"At the CRCLCL we have established 15 living laboratories around Australia which are a focus for exemplar developments while being a centre for action research providing evidence for better design, planning and policies," Prasad said.

India is the second most populated country in the world and contributes to six per cent of the world's primary energy consumption.

Managing the energy footprint of Indian cities is one of the most challenging goals, and with the evolution and transformation of existing cities into smart cities, smart energy management -- which aims for sustainable and low-carbon urban development -- becomes an integral component of this urban transformation.

According to Komali Yenneti, UNSW chair of the Knowledge Exchange series, the document would help policy makers and practitioners with information on relevant strategies, actions and initiatives on smart energy management.

The first of the four workshops, hosted in conjunction with Indian partners DuPont and Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), discussed urban heat management policies and was held at UNSW Sydney last November.

The second workshop was hosted by ASCI with DuPont in Hyderabad, India, in December, while TERI hosted the third event in Delhi a week later.