For the first time, Tamil Nadu will have a real supply of certified professionals as a nationwide certification exam for Building Energy Auditors (BEA) is to be held. But an exam produces certificate-holders, not a working system.
A ten-person team, a dozen mandates
The reason is structural. ECSBC and Eco Niwas Samhita (ENS) sit with the Demand Side Management (DSM) division of Tamil Nadu Power Distribution Corporation (TNPDCL). TNPDCL proceedings dated 1 September 2023 show the division fielding just 10 sanctioned posts for a mandate that also covers Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT) scheme for the National Mission for Enhanced Energy Efficiency, electric vehicle policy, agricultural demand management and BEE scheme enforcement.
Staffing shortage aside, the skill set doesn’t transfer. Reviewing a building’s energy compliance calls for knowledge of construction and architecture, not electricity distribution. ECSBC 2024 pushes further, into site planning and materials sustainability. BEE itself has flagged the pattern of assigning additional responsibility to existing state agencies as it dampens the pace and direction.
The states that built a department
Nationwide, several states have actively enforced energy conservation building codes by establishing dedicated departments. In Kerala, the Energy Management Centre (EMC) has empanelled 58 building energy auditors as of May 2025, with another 128 in the pipeline. Andhra Pradesh’s State Energy Conservation Mission (APSECM) has licensed 34 third-party assessors and incorporated the ECSBC and ENS into its building-approval software (DPMS) since 2018, automating compliance across all urban local bodies simultaneously. Meanwhile, Telangana mandates ECBC under the Telangana Municipalities Act, 2019, integrating compliance into the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation Development Permission Management System alongside 38 licensed assessors. Tamil Nadu currently lacks the structure of empanelled professionals, dedicated portals, or integration with the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority, the Directorate of Town and Country Planning, or municipal building-approval systems.
What Empanelment Alone Won’t Fix
BEE’s exam solves one half of the problem. Once a BEA signs off on a project, someone needs the technical capacity to monitor that work, spot-check submissions and act when a building falls short. That is a review and verification function, not a roster of names and Tamil Nadu has no technical division to run it.
The fix is structural, not incremental: a standalone State Energy Efficiency Agency, must be housed in the Tamil Nadu Green Climate Company or the Tamil Nadu Green Energy Corporation Limited. It should be staffed by architects and building-services engineers, not electrical engineers. Its brief must go beyond writing ECSBC into the TNCDBR, to a technical wing to monitor auditors and verify compliance, enforcement authority over non-compliant approvals and the builder education that Kerala and Andhra Pradesh invested in before enforcement began to bite.
