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Chandrashekar Hariharan |
THERE were some 30 people around the table. Many of them were heads of
construction companies doing at least $ 20 million of business each. They
shared a single commitment: to change the way in which we impact
energy, water and waste management in the country.
The first national executive meeting of the CII India Green Business Council
was being held in the recesses of the Lonavala hills in Maharashtra on a winter
weekend. For the businessmen present here was an opportunity not only
to reduce the pressure on the planet’s resources, but also to run their companies
more profitably.
Like someone said, “If Copenhagen simply concentrated on governance of
the construction industry, the world would drop a chunky 25 per cent of its
energy use every year.”
Helping industry leaders come to terms with new realities were planners,
researchers and some very senior bureaucrats. There was news that was quietly
being shared on the future that is set to unfold in India in the coming months.
“Every government building to be built will be only a green building,” said
the Director-General of Central Public Works Department (CPWD), B K
Chugh. The minimum rating would have to be three stars by energy efficiency
standards.
There are 1,200 universities set to open their doors in India under the
stewardship of Sam Pitroda, the current head of the Knowledge Commission.
There are eight innovation universities that are being cleared by the government.
There are 580 special economic zones (SEZs) that have been permitted
by the government and nearly 400 of them are ready.
All these will follow green construction norms. SEZs will have to conform
to guidelines specially formulated for them. The Director-General of SEZs in
India, has worked over the past six months on a set of norms that every SEZ
has to adhere to.
Consider more. The glazing industry has a society that is presided over by a
professional who is concerned about the high use of sand in glass manufacture.
“Every square meter of 5 mm glass weighs about 12 kg, and 40 per cent of
this is sand. So what are the options to optimise use of this precious natural
resource that is rapidly vanishing from our river beds?” he asked.
There are big challenges ahead of the construction industry if it wants to save itself, straddle business growth and
make for urban development that
does not accelerate CO2 emission.
A cubic meter of concrete uses
about 300 kg of cement. Every million
square feet of any construction
means a staggering 40,000 cubic
metres of concrete, or 12 million carbon
kg of emission!
How do government and industry
turn to sunshine, wind, water, and
waste to bolster energy efficiency,
accommodate population growth and
thrive without accelerating the
release of carbon into the atmosphere?
San Francisco has already
made it a crime not to compost food
and wet waste in a bid to cut landfill
use to zero. Barcelona has now
brought in regulation that says all
new and renovated buildings are
required to install solar collector panels
for a big part of their water-heating
needs. Rajkot has made mandatory
the installation of solar heating
systems for sanction plans for individual
homes and for residential builder projects.
Beginning January 2010 commercial buildings in
India will never be the same again. The Bureau of
Energy Efficiency has brought in a simple regulation
under a set of rules called the Energy
Conservation Building Code (ECBC). In the last two
years the ECBC was merely a set of guidelines that
office buildings could use voluntarily. It is no
longer so. The rules have to be followed.
The earlier guidelines were applicable only for
commercial buildings that consumed over 500 KVA
of energy. The new guidelines-turned-rules mandate
that every commercial building that uses over 100
KVA will have to be governed by the ECBC.
Not enough support systems
As the President of the India Green Building Council, Raghupathi reflected at
the Lonavala conclave, “There are not enough professionals who can audit
water and energy practices. There are not enough professionals who can offer
solutions into this new realm of building language.”
The head of a building major said, “Architects have to learn to respond to
needs that go beyond space, home, aesthetics and volume.”
The world of consultants who have traditionally offered solutions for
water management under the quaintly termed ‘public health engineering’
practices, now have to recalibrate their understanding of water, of land, and
of groundwater retention. Electrical consultants and engineers have to move
away from the traditional supply-side management of solutions to a whole
new sphere of demand-side strategies for energy. There are not enough practitioners
of waste management. Technologies for any of these systems are
still a little primitive with technocrats still not savvy enough on business
management or on brand management. So, the good ones remain unknown.
The conventional consulting professionals continue to offer solutions that
are not reflective of these new concerns and challenges.
There are no testing labs for innovations in building material. Testing for
energy and for structural stability is something that will gain prominence rapidly
in the next two or three years. The MNRE, the BEE, USAID and many
other industry bodies and government agencies are working toward creating
such testing infrastructure that can help industry de-risk potential failures in
building management systems and building materials in the long run.
India is clearly leading the world today in this major movement toward
building green. Today we have over 321 million square feet of certified buildings
that makes India the second largest in the world, only after the US. The
quality of such energy efficiency in India is superior to what the US has
achieved since 1994 when the green building movement actually began there.
The CII India Green Building Council is determined to achieve one billion
square feet of such certified green
commercial buildings by 2012. This
is two years from now.
The interesting other trend is that
in the residential building sector,
too, India has made rapid strides to
become the second largest in the
world at 100 million square feet of
green residential buildings.
But there is much that is needed
from industry and technologists.There are no more than 90 green
building products and equipment
that are available just now in the
Indian building market. This is
against about 2,000 on offer in the
US. The need for simple innovation
with high market acceptance and
reliability of performance needs
hardly needs to be emphasised.
Spreading the good word
If this movement has to gain in
strength evangelists have to spread
the good word and secure enrolment
from every stakeholder.
There is the need for rating systems and certification.
Today in India we have three building rating
systems with only one of them, the CII IGBC, having
made some tangible inroads into organised dissemination
of information. The IGBC today has nine
chapters, all of them manned and driven by voluntary
effort from business leaders who have nothing
to gain but the satisfaction of addressing these larger
concerns of the planet.
GRIHA and the Pune-based Eco-Housing System
are the other two systems that have still not gained
adequate visibility on the national urban horizon.
The government and its officers at the senior echelons
are still to fathom the consequences of the host of technologies, directions,
voluntary and regulatory standards, and the building management systems,
data and analytics that make for energy efficiency in buildings.
The myth of higher cost
Green buildings don’t cost more than conventional ones – only the demands
are different and need a better understanding of the resources that go to
make a building. Architects are usually blamed for bad practices, but it will be
sobering to remember that no more than two per cent of all buildings in the
country are actually designed and driven by architects. The unorganised sector
is far too large for effective monitoring of regulations and implementation.
That will be the big challenge before us in the next five years.
Advertising campaigns are needed to deter home-owners from buying what
is not certified. Smalltime contractors have to be sensitised. The cement
industry has to reinvent itself into not manufacturing pure cement but looking
for structurally sound solutions that use a blend of waste materials like
fly-ash from thermal power stations and slag from steel plants.
Consumers must realise that every kg of cement equals one kg of carbon.
A mere cubic meter of concrete uses 300 kg of cement and weighs 700 kg,
with the rest of the weight being made up of sand and stone which are essential
for concrete but which deplete natural resources in the periphery of
every city and town. Every ton of steel depletes about 280 tons of rich forest
resource for the iron ore that needs to be mined.
Can our cities become self-dependent without having to gorge these rich
resources of ecosystems outside our cities? Can our cities stop feeding on rivers
for power, water, and timber? Can our mineral resources be stopped from being
pillaged at the frightening pace at which they are being exhausted now?
As I stepped out into the cool thin air of Lonavala that late evening, it was
difficult not take a hard deep breath and savour it. How long will these silent
forests continue to take this vandalism from civilized people? I looked at the
brightly lit winter sky. The stars stared inscrutably back.
The writer is CEO, BCIL, the Bangalore-based green buildings pioneer. |
