Buildings in urban centres produce 23% of global carbon while consuming around 50% of all energy. Severe shocks to the energy system, such as the coal shortage of September 2021 that left 50% of Indian power plants with only three days' supply reserve, draw a clear link between lowered energy demand and improved energy security.

The well-known indoor and outdoor air problems in many Indian cities, as well as the recent pandemic have shown the critical role of clean indoor environments. Poorly thought-out urban design will exacerbate these issues, creating negative feedback cycles of increased indoor environmental stress due to more frequent extreme climate-change driven events, increasing energy needs, and eventually driving up carbon emissions.

A typical building's lifetime is around 60 years, so today's decisions made by young architects and engineers will affect two generations of users, numbering several millions. The Global South alone, with India as a major player, is expected to roughly double all current global floor space by 2050. Hence, there is an urgent need to train a new generation of building and urban designers who know how to, and how not to, design buildings and neighbourhoods that are climate resilient, energy secure and healthy.

Why is CREST important?

Indian codes such as the ECBC and GRIHA have created new market demand for green building professionals, with one popular job-search site currently advertising > 24,000 vacancies. However, these codes only tackle the issue of energy security and do not explicitly tackle climate resilience or health, addressed by CREST. We also meet NIUA's requirement for professionally relevant curricula, and we plan to train 30 smart city managers and policy makers via NIUA in 2022.

CREST directly addresses national and state priorities via the draft NEP 2019's P12.4.6 'Student Mobility', P.12.4.1 'Internationally Relevant Education' as well as P12.4.3 'Encouraging Institutional Collaborations'.