Cuttack, Dec. 27: The civic body will shortly launch a plan to promote construction of green buildings to conserve energy in the city.

The Cuttack Municipal Corporation will come up with a strategy and guidelines to implement various schemes towards energy conservation within six months. A senior civic official today said a detailed energy audit of commercial and residential buildings would be done in the first phase to get the power consumption data.

The civic body will team up with experts of United Nations Development Programme to save energy and reduce emission of green house gases by adhering to the Energy Conservation Building Code.

Though Odisha was the first state to adopt the code, an official said they could not progress much due to lack of technical knowhow. "The programme will set up a dedicated cell and a team of experts will assist the corporation to ensure that both old and new commercial buildings switch to energy-efficient measures to cut down their power requirements by opting for renewal energy sources and other available options," said municipal commissioner Gyana Das.

"The energy consumption is expected to grow by at least thrice in the next few years which will put tremendous pressure on governments in meeting the requirements in the state and the country," said the UN body's program analyst S.N. Srinivasan.

Das further said the civic body would focus on 100 per cent compliance of the code by adopting basic energy-conservation measures, such as use of energy-efficient lights. "The code also focuses on use of energy-saving CFL and LED lights and solar heaters, which are simple technologies that have already proved to save both money and energy," Das said.

The civic body today organised a workshop to discuss the possibilities of implementing the energy-saving projects.