Established in 1974, TERI is a research organization that works towards global sustainable development through eco-friendly practices. TERI came into being with the purpose of dealing with the environment-related problems that loom large in the face of mankind,

• on account of the steady depletion of the earth's finite and largely non-renewable resources and
• on account of the existing methods of the use of these resources, which are polluting

Origin

Over the years, TERI has expanded the interpretation of its core purpose and application. The body intends to create an environment that is enabling and dynamic, through the right approach towards the use of energy, and modify current patterns of development which are largely unsustainable. TERI has grown to establish a presence not only in India but is perhaps the only developing country institution to have established a presence in North America and Europe and on the Asian continent in Japan, Malaysia and the Gulf.

The global reach attained by TERI is substantiated not only by its presence in different parts of the world, but also in terms of the wide geographical relevance of its activities. Symbolic of this fact is the annual Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (DSDS), a major event focusing on sustainable development, the pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and assessment of worldwide progress in these critical areas. DSDS attracts the most prominent thinkers and practitioners in a range of fields that impinge on development.

TERI GRIHA Rating System

Being committed to sustainable development, TERI has taken upon itself the responsibility of acting as a driving force to popularize green building by developing a tool for measuring and rating a building’s environmental performance in the context of India’s varied climate and building practices. This tool, by its qualitative and quantitative assessment criteria, has been able to rate a building on the degree of its greenness.

The Indian building industry is highly decentralized, involving diverse stakeholders engaged in design, construction, equipment provision, installation, and renovation of buildings. Each group may be organized to some extent, but there is limited interaction among the groups, thus disabling the integrated green design and application process. Hence, it is very important to define and quantify sustainable building practices and their benefits. It is also imperative to delineate the role of each actor in ensuring that the building consumes minimal resources in its entire life cycle and leaves behind minimal environmental footprint. The role of TERI GRIHA would be to bridge this gap, by addressing to these above issues and to promote a sustainable future in the building sector.

TERI’s green building rating evaluates the environmental performance of a building holistically over its entire life cycle, thereby providing a definitive standard for what constitutes a green building. The rating system is a voluntary scheme that has been developed based on accepted energy and environmental principles and seeks to strike a balance between the established practices and emerging concepts, both nationally and internationally. Its structural development is a result of a thorough study and understanding of the current internationally accepted green building rating systems and the prevailing building practices in India. It has also derived useful inputs from the voluntary building codes/guidelines being developed by the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources, MoEF (Ministry of Environment and Forests), Government of India and the Bureau of Indian Standards.

The guidelines/criteria for appraisal would be revised every three years to take into account the latest scientific developments during this period.

TERI-GRIHA’s green design practices, and the array of individual and institutional professionals who put these in practice, would be publicized and promoted to achieve the following goals.

• It has immense replication probability for seeing is believing.
• It motivates the user and the owner to fulfill their commitment to the environment by emulating the example it sets.
• It helps generate awareness on the concept of green building.
• It stimulates competition among peers to achieve the same performance or to endeavour to better it.

Currently the system has been developed to help design and evaluate new buildings (buildings that are still at the inception stages). A building is assessed based on its predicted performance over its entire life cycle inception through operation. The stages of the life cycle that have been identified for evaluation are the pre-construction, building design and construction, and building operation and maintenance stages. The issues that get addressed in these stages are as follows.

• Pre-construction stage (intra- and inter-site issues)
• Building planning and construction stages (issues of resource conservation and reduction in resource demand, resource utilization efficiency, resource recovery and reuse, and provisions for occupant health and well being). The prime resources that are considered in this section are land, water, energy, air, and green cover.
• Building operation and maintenance stage (issues of operation and maintenance of building systems and processes, monitoring and recording of consumption, and occupant health and well being, and also issues that affect the global and local environment).

TERI University

The Institute established the TERI University in 1998. Initially set-up as the TERI School of Advanced Studies, it received the status of a deemed university in 1999. The University is a unique institution of higher learning exclusively for programmes leading to PhD and Masters level degrees. Its uniqueness lies in the wealth of research carried out within TERI as well as by its faculty and students making it a genuinely research based University.

TERI now has staff strength of over 700 dedicated employees, drawn from a range of disciplines and experience, supported by infrastructure and facilities, which are world class and distinctively state-of-the-art. The Institute continues to grow in size, spread and intensity of work undertaken.

In this world of increasing globalization and buoyed by optimism generated by the success of the Indian economy TERI moves forward to meet the challenges of the future through the pursuit of excellence embedded in its visionary charter.

Activities of TERI

TERI is a leading Indian non government organization (NGO), a global think tank conducting research and analysis in the genres of energy and environment, is a university with a vast focus, which ranges from micro organisms to global climate change and everything in between. In its 30 years of existence, TERI has completed more than 2600 projects. TERI has about 20 divisions and some important divisions are:

• Biotechnology and Management of Bioresources division
• Climate Change Division
• Energy-Environment Technology Division
• Policy Analysis Division
• Water Resources Policy and Management Division
• Social Transformation Division

TERI’s competence in the water sector

The Water Resources Policy and Management (WRPM) group in TERI comprises a multi-disciplinary team of engineers (civil, chemical, environmental, and water resources), geologists, architects, planners, scientists, economists, and sociologists. The thrust areas of the group include:

• Water availability and quality modeling and impact assessment
• Socio-economic analysis vis-à-vis water management
• Water systems efficiency
• Policy, institutional, and regulatory reforms
• Watershed planning

Awards

TERI instituted the TERI Corporate Awards for Environmental Excellence in 2001 and TERI Corporate Awards for Corporate Social Responsibility in 2002. In 2007 TERI introduced the Corporate Awards to Business Response to HIV/AIDS in collaboration with GTZ. Since inception we have received more than 600 applications for the awards.

Role of TERI in recognizing environment-friendly initiatives

TERI Corporate Environmental Awards

The corporate sector is emerging as a critical player in India’s development process. The environmental implications of India’s industrialization process indicate that pollution has been rising with, and often faster than, the growth in industrial production. Driven by the rising scale and intensity of environmental pressures and society’s changing expectations from the corporate sector, business and the environment, traditionally seen as divergent issues, are steadily coming closer. Realizing the increasing complexities facing the environment, corporates have begun to recognize their responsibility. In the recent years, a number of corporates have taken bold and visible steps to integrate sustainability elements into their overall corporate strategy.

In order to provide impetus to sustainable development and to encourage the ongoing process of environmental management and protection within the corporate sector, TERI instituted the Corporate Environmental Awards in 2000/01. Encouraged by the overwhelming response and sincere interest shown by the Indian corporate houses, TERI confers the awards annually.

TERI Corporate Social Responsibility Awards

TERI CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility Awards) seeks to identify best practices and innovations of Indian corporate in fulfilling t heir responsibilities towards diverse stakeholders. In the process, TERI also aims to sensitize the corporates to their responsibilities as good citizens of a developing world. The prime objective of these awards are to assess the extent of integration of CSR concerns with corporate functioning, responsiveness to the needs of different stakeholders, and development of innovative partnership models to fulfill social responsibility.