Building green a must for urban transformation in India

About 70% of global population will comprise of city dwellers by 2050, with Asian and African cities and towns slated to register biggest growth, reveals a United Nations forecast. Cities are getting overcrowded by the day, with each urban centre either facing shortage or having an issue related to housing, water supply, energy efficiency et al. What makes the issue even more grim are the raising environmental concerns and the impacts of climate change.

                                                      Image source: Internet

India treading the urban development path

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s urban agenda has put India on the global map. Modi recently launched three major urban development schemes and those are ‘Housing for All by 2022’, ‘100 Smart Cities’ and ‘Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT)’ – the scheme to provide 24/7 water supply to each and every Indian household. In addition, the government launched the ‘National Heritage City Development and Augmentation Yojana’ (HRIDAY) scheme to preserve and revitalize urban infrastructure in heritage cities. As India is gradually taking a step towards sustainable urban transformation, challenges and opportunities are abundant.

The need for going green

India currently faces housing shortage of 2 crore units. With the announcement of ‘Housing for All by 2022’ mission, the government aims to provide housing units for the common men at affordable rates, which in turn will encourage public housing projects in India at a large scale.

This is, however, not the first time that India has taken up mass housing projects. The public housing projects that had been taken up in the past lacked the basic amenities a regular housing project boasts of, let alone the green elements.

India’s varied geography and climate easily make it vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change. Developing nations like India suffer from water table degradation and an inadequate water supply to households.  Building green has thus become crucial now.

A common misconception that is held by most about green buildings is that they’re too expensive. However, a startling revelation is that there is a marginal difference in cost between a green and a conventional non-green building. In terms of residential projects, the incremental cost ranges between 0.8 to 2 percent if the quality of construction is high. Moreover, green buildings are a long-term investment as they heavily cut down on the costs later.

Green buildings help save electricity by 15 percent approximately, and there is a reduction in water consumption by 33 percent approximately. They consume less water by reducing the use of potable water, recycling grey water for re-use and recharging water tables through rainwater harvesting. Such careful use and management of water is crucial to provide adequate water supply to every Indian household which constitutes the major part of the AMRUT mission.

Besides, green buildings ensure enhanced air quality, improved natural lighting, reduced temperature fluctuations and better ventilation, which in turns means improved human health.

Major urban centres in India are already saturated, and greening initiatives in these areas can be taken up by retrofitting the existing buildings. U. S. Green Building Council’s innovation - LEED Dynamic Plaque – can help record the performance of these buildings on factors such as energy, waste, water, transport and human experience. This innovation can even be extended to heritage buildings, preserving which are a part of the HRIDAY mission. While one may argue that ancient buildings are already green – attributing to their construction, since they are already built in a way so that natural light penetrates in, timely retrofits and repairs are a must to ensure the sustainability of these buildings.

Globally, tremendous efforts are being taken to build large-scale public housing projects with green initiatives. US has many green affordable housing projects. “Hong Kong has started public housing projects that are green compliant,” said Dr. Sujata S. Govada, Founding and Managing Director, UDP International.

Lately, India has also been witnessing a revolution in the construction sector as many developers are opting to go green and building climate-responsive structures.

Kesar City in Ahmedabad is an EDGE-rated affordable housing project. Mahindra World City in Jaipur is a C40 compliant project. “It is world’s sixth and the only project in Asia to be C40 compliant,” said Manish Prasad Sinha, Sr. Consultant DES, Tech Mahindra.

Government entities in India are too taking initiatives to come up with green public housing projects. Suresh Babu, Additional Chief Planner, City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) at Municipalika 2015 mentioned that CIDCO is incorporating green features in its upcoming housing project. “We aim to construct 55,000 houses in the coming 5 years. We have a lab that specifically caters to capacity building,” added Babu.

Incentives are provided by certain government organisations to those who take green initiatives. “Thane Municipal Corporation has been in the forefront in this concern, however, the only issue regarding green buildings is that many people are not aware about it, and hence they fail to reap the benefits out of it,” asserted Mala Singh, Founder and CMD, PEC Solutions Green Designs.

Singh also commented on how our existing structures can be made climate resilient. “Green roofs and walls need to be built,” she said.

With U. S. Green Building Council’s commitment at Buildings Day, COP21, Paris to scale LEED and EDGE green buildings to more than 5 billion square feet over the next five years, expectations are raised that India becomes a larger part of this agenda.