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Climate Change Mitigation
The construction sector
in India is responsible for approximately 22% of carbon emissions. Most of our
structures work against the climate rather than with it.
Climate Change mitigation in the Buildings Sector: - Energy efficiency is one of the most important options to reduce GHG emissions worldwide in the short- to mid-term. - If costs are taken into account, improved building efficiency becomes the most important instrument in our mitigation portfolio in the short- to mid-term. - Capturing only the cost-effective potential in buildings can supply approx. 38% of total reduction needed in 2030 to keep us on a trajectory capping warming at 3˚C - New buildings can achieve the largest savings. As much as 80% of the
operational costs of standard new buildings can be saved through integrated
design principles, often at no or little extra cost
Source:
Climate Change
Mitigation in the Buildings Sector;
IPCC
Outreach Event on the AR4, Marrakech, April 2008;
Anthony
M. Mehlwana, CSIR, South Africa
- In addition to climate change benefits, improved energy-efficiency can advance several development goals as well as strategic economic targets - e.g. energy security, business opportunities and job creation |
The Olympia Tech Park in Chennai is the world’s largest
commercial building with Leed gold rating, the most significant would be the
air-conditioning units, since they account for two-thirds of the energy bill of
any building.
Spanning 1.9 million square feet, the Olympia which was
designed for 14 MW of power will not require more than 8 MW with the six
chillers provided by Trane, each of which can deliver 370 tonnes of cooling.
“The demand has been cut by 40 percent. There is Rs 10 savings per square feet from energy alone. The estimated annual carbon saving would be 5814 tonnes translating to carbon credit earning of Rs 6 million a year,” notes Chordia. However it is still in the process of being registered for
CDM but that will pay for the extra capital costs. This extra cost would come up
to Rs 100 per sq ft translating to a total Rs 15 crore more. Trane’s innovative
technologies in heat recovery chiller control and water system design have
helped the process a lot.
Setting
the perfect green example, by Jayalakshmi K, The Deccan Herald, Bangalore,
19 Oct 2007
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Today, architects and builders such as Hiranandani, K
Raheja, L&T and others have taken upon themselves to develop Green Buildings.
These firms are shifting towards environmentfriendly and energy saving
techniques for constructing commercial and residential buildings. Also, with
buyers becoming more environment conscious, eco-friendly homes with energy
efficient doors and windows, herbal gardens, rainwater harvesting and solar
heating are a huge hit! "The reason why more and more people are opting for
ecofriendly homes is that they not only save -money, but also have an aesthetic
appeal,"
Going Green,
by MINT, Mumbai, 28 Apr 2008
In fact the green architecture helps in cutting overall construction costs by almost 30 per cent |
| ‘BCIL Collective’, which offers
several new features and benefits to customers that reduce carbon dioxide
emission, both in the building process and later in routine life in these
homes. The homes are being built with not a single brick, clay tile or burnt clay block being used — because all three materials are energy-intensive in manufacture, apart from using precious top soil that threatens agriculture. This project also uses energy-efficient building blocks that reduce heat gain in every house. A unique feature at this residential campus are the low-maintenance, low-cost energy-saving ‘air-conditioning’ systems that are ecologically sustainable. The air conditioning system at BCIL Collective is a combination of earth tunnel ventilation, night cooling systems as well as ‘a forced ventilation system’ called ‘Stack Effect’. All of these are simple in creation and high on energy saving and comfort brought to every home. BCIL homes are about building systems and designs that address global warming solutions. Campus lighting is done with a combination of CFL and LED lighting systems, with no incandescent lamps, fluorescent tubes or halogen bulbs used anywhere in the campus. Home built without a single brick, The Deccan Herald, Bangalore, 29 Feb 2008 | ||
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T-Zed Homes, a housing complex on
six acres off Varathur Road in Bangalore. T-Zed stands for ‘Zero Emission Development’ new age apartments have been built by Biodiversity Conservation India Ltd (BCIL), Asia’s largest green building company. BCIL’s mantra is: ‘Be the Change’. It builds homes that reduce the burden on municipal services by harvesting water, reviving forests, reusing waste and tapping solar energy. You don’t live like some pious hermit. You get to splash around in a natural swimming pool and cool off in natural air-conditioning. Each apartment has gardens with soil made of coir and mulch. Two cats loll in Krishna’s sunken sky garden outside her living space. A centralised system of drip irrigation will be used to water it. Herbs have been planted. As she goes up a metal staircase to the floor above, Krishna says she grows her own vegetables in her roof garden. “There are no bricks or ceramic tiles which are fired at 1,200 degrees in this place,” says Vinay. “T-Zed apartments have been built with sun-dried soil stabilised blocks and re-used construction debris. You have to reduce material use. All the excessive quarrying that we do will come back to haunt us.” T-Zed residents take just 30 per cent of their water from Bangalore’s municipality. All rainwater is collected and flows along the contour of the land. There are 44 rainwater percolation wells that are interconnected. The water leads to a 400,000 litre water tank located beneath a road behind the housing complex. The water is purified in a central reverse osmosis system. A high-pressure pneumatic system pumps water to each apartment. Grey water is supplied for gardens, toilets and for washing cars. All sewage is treated in-house. Biodegradable waste is fed into a biogas digester of 150 kg capacity. Since T-Zed residents produce only 60 kg of such waste each day, they have set up a Green Council and invited two other residential enclaves to dump their kitchen waste into their biogas digester. About 100 kg of wet waste should produce 4.5 kg of biogas a day, enough to run a community kitchen, reckons Hariharan. T-Zed’s central air-conditioning has been specially designed by BCIL and is free of the ozone depleting CFC and HCFC. “We have gone back to the post-war technology of ammonia serving as refrigerant. Ammonia is a benign chemical and is risk-free in home settlements,” Streets within the T-Zed area are lit with CFLs and LEDs. Late at night, the CFLs go off, further conserving energy. Each family earns Rs 12,000 a year in the form of carbon credits. LAVISH GREEN HOMES by Vidya Viswanathan, Civil Society Magazine, 01 Apr 2008 |
Key opportunities for the construction
industry
Considering that the buildings sector accounts for over 22% of the carbon emissions, it thus becomes its responsibility to get involved in its mitigation especially as most of our structures work against the climate rather than with it. Climate Change mitigation in the Buildings Sector [1]: - Energy efficiency is one of the most important options to reduce GHG emissions worldwide in the short- to mid-term. - If costs are taken into account, improved building efficiency becomes the most important instrument in our mitigation portfolio in the short- to mid-term. - Capturing only the cost-effective potential in buildings can supply approx. 38% of total reduction needed in 2030 to keep us on a trajectory capping warming at 3˚C - New buildings can achieve the largest savings. As much as 80% of the operational costs of standard new buildings can be saved through integrated design principles, often at no or little extra cost - In addition to climate change benefits, improved energy-efficiency can advance several development goals as well as strategic economic targets - e.g. energy security, business opportunities and job creation
[1]
Climate Change Mitigation in the
Buildings Sector;
IPCC Outreach Event on the AR4, Marrakech, April 2008;
Anthony M. Mehlwana, CSIR,
South Africa
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