Now that was unexpected!

New Delhi, June 7: The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) today announced a strategic collaboration to accelerate the development of high performance buildings in India and Southeast Asia.

Essentially, apart from lavishing praise on each other in their press-releases, they’re talking about making it easier for projects to have dual certification by “offering seamless pathways” to do so. However, what we still don’t know–and what they haven’t spelt out–is how they plan to reconcile their fundamentally different approaches to sustainable construction.

One wonders what compulsions made these two reach out to each other. Let’s not fool ourselves that it was an altruistic move for the betterment of all mankind. This was a hard business decision and there must be some powerful financial reasons behind it.

What will it mean for the future of GRIHA? Are they running scared because LEED certification has greater aspirational status and because India is already the third largest market for them outside of the USA? On the other hand, GRIHA is officially backed by the Indian government so, is LEED trying to stick a foot in that door now?

Time will tell of course but I can’t help feeling that TERI has made a blunder.

Press releases from TERI & USGBC

Edit: On request from TERI, the image in this post (which originally contained their logo) has been changed.