PANELLING MADE from plastic waste, wood recycled
from old ships, carpets of recycled plastic and
CO2 monitors that regulate the proportion of
oxygen and carbon dioxide in the room. These are
just a handful of things you are likely to
encounter if you walk into the ITC Green Centre
in Gurgaon or the Patni Knowledge Centre in
Noida, alongside more ‘conventional’ green
measures like solar panels and fully day-lit
office spaces. These two buildings , along with
a few others across the country, have been among
the early adopters of the green building
movement in the country; a direct result of the
increasing awareness on sustainability.
Quiz
most people on why they are greening their
buildings, and you can be guaranteed that the
answer will touch upon them wanting to do their
bit to save the earth and trying to cut down on
emissions. So one tends to sit up and take
notice when Anirudh Patni says, “We started
going green because it makes imminent business
sense. Using green intelligently can be
beneficial to the bottomline.” The senior
vice-president for strategy and corporate
development at Patni Computer Systems says the
company’s green spaces also make for healthier
employees, directing impacting productivity.
A
green building, by definition, is one which
conserves natural resources, is energy
efficient, and a healthier space for its
occupants as compared to a conventional
building. In India, the green building movement
has been pioneered by CII which set up the
Indian Green Building Council in 2001 at the
behest of then US President Bill Clinton. “We
decided that the headquarters of the CII-Green
Building Centre in Hyderabad would be housed in
a green building that would showcase all the
different technologies which could be used in
such a building,” says Jamshyd Godrej, chairman,
CIISohrabji Godrej Green Business Centre.
The
result was the first LEED (Leadership in Energy
and Environmental Design) Platinum certified
building outside of the United States, and the
third in the world. India has since rapidly
moved up the ladder with the ITC and Patni
structures ranking as two of the largest
Platinum certified structures globally. At last
count, India had a total of 52 certified green
buildings and 428 green projects.
Niranjan Khatri, GM Welcomenviron Initiatives ,
ITC Welcomgroup, says work was already underway
on their hotel division headquarters when CII
suggested that ITC make it a green building.
Construction was stopped in order to understand
the finer nuances of a green building. “We
realised that the green practices which we had
implemented through our own learning were on par
with LEEDS Gold standards, however , our
chairman asked us to aim for a Platinum
certification,” he says.
While some tend to argue that the cost of
setting up a green building tends to be higher
than a conventional one, the converts point out
the energy savings that kick in along with
reduced operating costs mean that the difference
in costs can be recovered within the first three
years of the building lifecycle. At the ITC
Green Centre for instance, energy usage is
pegged at 1,30,000 units instead of 6,30,000
units if this building was made with business as
usual approach.
Besides, as they gain in popularity, the cost of
constructing a green building too has come down
significantly. Khatri points out that in 2003,
there was a 15% cost overrun when building the
Green Centre, which he calls a ‘pioneers cost’ .
On the other hand, the Odyssey building at GE’s
John F Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore was
completed earlier this year at a cost of Rs 138
crore — an incremental 0.5% of the total project
cost went into making it a Gold certified
structure.
CM
Tiwari, environmental health and safety leader,
GE JFWTC says that this cost would be offset
easily, as they anticipate a reduction of 40% in
operating costs, 25% in energy consumption and
20% in water consumption. Put differently , the
savings are equivalent to powering close to 550
Indian homes or supplying water to about 250
people.
ITC
is now in the process of extending its green
initiatives to all upcoming, and existing hotel
properties, with the latest one, ITC Royal
Gardenia in Bangalore aiming to be carbon
positive by next year.
While most large real estate developers too have
climbed onto the green bandwagon proclaiming
that their future projects will be green, there
has been some amount of reluctance since the
cost benefits that kick in would be beneficial
to the end consumer and not the developer.
This
is what Milestone Ecofirst Advisory Services is
trying to solve. PG Ganapathy, Director at the
‘sustainable development consultancy’ says, “One
problem with trying to build green buildings is
that as soon as the architect reports a slight
cost overrun, the owner is no longer keen to
continue with it.”
Which is why he is working with companies from
the initial stages of the planning process so
that green elements can be incorporated right at
the design stage. One thing that often helps in
keeping costs down, he says, is to look for
regional solutions, rather than blindly adopting
what Western countries are doing.
Critics may argue that opting for green
buildings is often an attempt at ‘greenwashing’
and an easy way out for companies to be able to
tick the relevant boxes without really doing
much. Admitting that there are people who tend
to label even regular measures green, Godrej
points out that this partly is also due to lack
of awareness.
“Green buildings are an easy and early win, and
often as companies realise that sustainability
goes beyond green spaces, they sign up to be a
part of our ‘Mission on Sustainable Growth’ ,”
he says. Till date, over 350 companies have
voluntarily signed on, and CII is now working on
norms for green SEZs and factories.
Meanwhile, globally as well as in India, it is
clear that green is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ .
“For new buildings almost all over the world,
‘green’ with respect to energy usage is no
longer really an issueit’s now part of best
practice in design. Only the very short sighted
or very cash constrained now design and
construct buildings without consideration of the
life cycle costs of energy,” says John Macomber
, Harvard Business School lecturer on
sustainability and real estate.
While green may cost marginally more than
conventional spaces, it’s almost certain that as
it grows in popularity, going green will provide
a very compelling cost equation that few smart
businesses will be able to resist.
