Embodied Carbon in Construction India

Embodied Carbon Takes Centre Stage in India's Construction Boom

November 14, 2023
6:54 am

India is set to double its entire built floor area by 2050. That is an unprecedented volume of cement, steel, and glass, each kilogram carrying a carbon cost that is locked in before a building opens its doors. The industry can no longer treat embodied carbon as a footnote.

India’s construction sector already contributes approximately 17–25% of national greenhouse gas emissions combining the energy used in buildings with the carbon embedded in producing and transporting materials. Cement and steel together account for roughly 20% of building-sector emissions nationally. Brick kilns add a further 65 million tonnes of CO₂ per year. With less than 1% of construction and demolition waste currently recycled in India, the embodied carbon problem compounds with every demolition cycle.

A landmark moment came in November 2025 when the IGBC Green Building Congress in Mumbai launched the Green New Buildings Rating System Version 4 — its most significant update in years. The new version, for the first time, incorporates embodied carbon measurement as a formal criterion, alongside zero-discharge water strategies and enhanced circularity mandates. Parallel revisions to the National Building Code (NBC 2025-26) have introduced Life Cycle Assessment and embodied carbon requirements, signalling a decisive shift from operational-energy-only thinking to whole-life-carbon accountability.

Lodha Group’s October 2025 research study baselining embodied carbon across building heights and typologies in India found that upfront embodied carbon accounts for 30–50% of total lifecycle emissions in Indian buildings, yet existing tools largely rely on Western supply-chain data that fails to account for India’s dominance of induction-furnace steelmaking and high blended-cement usage.

PMAY-U now mandates fly-ash bricks and AAC blocks in affordable housing, avoiding an estimated 9 million tonnes of CO₂ by the end of 2024.

State governments in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana offer 5–20% property-tax rebates for buildings using recycled materials.

Specify fly-ash bricks, AAC blocks, blended PPC/PSC cements, and recycled steel — India’s most proven low-carbon structural alternatives.

Request Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) from suppliers; IGBC v4 now rewards EPD-backed material choices.

Favour adaptive reuse and renovation over demolition; retaining an existing structure can cut upfront embodied carbon by up to 77%.

Conduct a whole-building Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) at the design stage; NBC 2025–26 is now moving this from voluntary to expected.

Eleganz Perspective

At Eleganz, embodied carbon review is now a standard item in our design brief, not an optional add-on.

We track material carbon intensity alongside cost in our Rate Analysis, and our procurement team prioritises vendors who can demonstrate EPD or IGBC v4-compliant material data.