Green warehousing to be a reality soon

Hyderabad: Warehousing is one of the fastest growing segments in the real estate sector and a green warehouse provides more advantages to the entire ecosystem. However, it is a challenge to ensure a building is future-ready and sustainable. The warehousing space shall be certified by an authorised agency.

Telangana government wants to bring a green building code for the new as well as existing warehouses and data centres. Telangana Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development KT Rama Rao announced that the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) will work on preparing guidelines for the upcoming and established warehouses to be energy efficient.

"Till now, the State government never bothered whether the warehouses are following any green building code or not. The CII wants to work with the government to bring out a code for ensuring that all the warehouses are energy efficient and they follow green building norms. It's a very win-win situation to all," Telangana Industries Principal Secretary Jayesh Ranjan told Bizz Buzz.

"From now onwards, whenever we give any approval to a data centre or logistics infrastructure, we would like that to be developed with sustainable features only. The CII team will help us in developing a green code for warehouses. We will ask them to work out some retrofitting suggestions for existing warehouse infrastructure also," he informed.

Indian Green Building Council (IGBC), a part of the CII, already has green building rating systems across 30 categories including schools, townships, railway stations, data centres, logistics parks and warehouses. IGBC-Hyderabad Chapter recently given pre-certification to Telangana's new Integrated Secretariat complex.

C Shekar Reddy, Chairman of IGBC-Hyderabad Chapter, said: "We will form a committee with stakeholders, including the owner, user and a consultant, as the members for creating the parameters of a sustainable warehouse. Green warehousing has multiple benefits such as zero pollution, power consumption, waste management, water efficiency and less operating costs.

He further said, "Like other neighbouring States, Telangana government should also incentivise the IGBC-rated green warehouses to encourage the sustainability. We had earlier submitted a representation to the State government, but it is still pending. If the government offers incentives, old warehouses will also upgrade to fulfill the shortfalls and get better rating."

As per Knight Frank's Warehousing Market Report 2021, the warehousing demand has grown drastically in Hyderabad. The warehousing activity is largely concentrated in three major clusters - Medchal−Malkajgiri cluster in the north, Patancheru cluster in the west and Shamshabad cluster in the south. Medchal cluster has almost half of the warehouses in the city.