India now has 240 million sq ft of green buildings in place—up from just 20,000 sq ft in 2003. But the Indian Green Building Council has a “mission of achieving 1 sq ft of green building for every Indian by 2012,” said Prem C. Jain, the council’s chairman, which will come to more than 1 billion sq ft.
The council, a division of the Confederation of Indian Industry, sponsored the Green Building Congress 2008, which drew more than 2,000 industry professionals to Mumbai Sept. 25-27. Speakers commented that India can probably achieve even more than the 1-billion-sq-ft goal, which would come to between 10 and 15% of the country’s new construction at that time.