The future of the Indian glass industry: Emerging technologies and growth prospects

The building glazing industry in India has come a long way since its true inception more than two decades back with multiple options now available and spread all across the country with respect to availability and installation companies there have been huge strides since its days of inception however the times of today of are very different than what it was even five years ago.

The pressing need that the world is going through is with respect to the impact that various human activities are having on the environment and what this holds for and our next generation future if you look at the carbon footprint that is being generated by the glazing but not placing by the building industry it is very clear that the construction of the building industry is one of the biggest contributors of carbon footprint amongst other sources in the world in such a scenario it becomes absolutely imperative that not just glass but every aspect of building construction and every aspect of building operations is designed constructed installed and used in a way that the impact on the environment is kept to a minimum although it is not possible to completely eliminate generation of carbon through new technologies it is very highly likely and possible that these are kept to a minimum level, significantly less than what we see today.

Glass has always been a material of choice for architects and designers due to its aesthetics low maintenance quick installation and extremely durable life span however with it comes the important drawback of a very high heat ingress compared to traditional materials like brick and stone. With such a high emphasis on sustainability and climate change, there are new technologies available today by which the impact on the environment can be reduced glass coatings have come a long way from being from performing at a very basic level to being extremely high on spectral selectivity which means that we can allow light but significantly cut off heat through the use of advanced materials like silver and other metallic oxides. 

However, a lot of these technologies relate to static facades which behave the same whether it’s day or night and irrespective of the season or time of the year. The way forward is to make these facades dynamic which means that they will change their state depending on the time of the day the intensity of light and other factors today it’s possible to have dynamic tinted glasses which can be controlled through your smart device or by the building management system by which these glasses can be tinted from a dark state which allows low light and low heat transmission to a light state which can be used during cloudy days and during nights and evenings. Such dynamic glazing technologies will ensure that’s the operational carbon footprint of these buildings is kept to a minimum since both the light and the HVAC consumption can be optimized based on the state of the class.

Some cities like London and New York have very stringent norms today which look at both the embodied carbon as well as the operational carbon footprint of buildings. Embodied carbon is the total allowable carbon that goes into the construction of the building and this is a cumulative sum of all the materials that were produced and the carbon emissions required to produce them. On the other hand, operational carbon which depends on the operational costs and operational consumption of HVAC and lighting is also capped which means that the kind of Glass and other materials used has to conform to those norms. Today India also needs to implement such stringent norms. We have the undesired distinction of having the majority cities of the top 20 most polluted cities in our country. Taking a lead from the automotive industry where the government has enforced stringent emission norms such as the Bharat (BS – 5 & 6 ) and these progressive emission norms keep improving with time in the same way even the construction industry should be very strictly regulated. There should be a cap on both the embodied and the operational carbon of buildings which will ensure that our construction is far more sustainable well-regulated and perfectly implemented to give us a much better future. With this the kind of glass that goes into buildings will also see a change where developers will be forced to use the right kind of glazing materials on facades rather than the current norm of most of these decisions being driven by costs. Technology has to be forced to develop to cater to such pressing needs.