There are some simple legal expedients that urban local bodies should be introducing to make residential buildings more efficient on use of materials.CHANDRASHEKAR HARIHARAN offers you a perspective on such laws needed for commercial buildings,which are multiplying at a chilling rate.
The whole rash of office spaces,shopping malls,and hotels that have sprung up over the last decade is just the beginning of a tide of more such buildings that are to spring up over this and the next decade up until 2030.
Year 2010 alone has seen the creation of a staggering one billion square feet of such spaces hospitals,hotels and office blocks across the country.This figure will steadily rise at about 10% to reach a mind-boggling 3 billion square feet by 2030;every extrapolation that market researchers present,is only throwing up this figure.We need to clamp down on these with a law that will restore sanity in their use of water and energy and the way they manage waste.The simple expedient of an insistence by town planners on the following elements as part of sanction plan requirements will help.
To start with,the need for solar heating will not arise in these buildings for the quantum of hot water used is nearzero.But the use of fresh water from external sources for the chiller plant has to be banned: this is already law in a few states like Tamil Nadu.
There has to be a law,like in Tokyo city,that the ambient temperature inside office spaces cannot be less than 24-28 degree celsius.This will ensure that there is a drop of about 40% demand for airconditioning energy.In just the last decade,with architects and promoters coming up with buildings that are sealed with metal and glass,energy demand has risen to over 1,000MW a day on just this one count alone in the Big 6 cities.Town planners who clear such drawings have looked the other way,or worse,have been oblivious to the long-term implications of such thoughtless architecture.
Town planners have to mandate the placing of corridors and public access ways in a building to be outside the airconditioning areas.This will drop airconditioning needs by at least 30% and will save the builder a substantial part in terms of capital costs.
All doors in such airconditioned spaces must be mandated to open inwards,and not outwards,as part of the legislation.This saves thermal energy loss in rooms that can cumulatively make for a stunning drop in the designed thermal loads and in daily energy consumption.There have to be norms stipulated for density of people per square metre that a building will host.
For long,hotels have had a mandated ban on the use of electricity for hot water.This has led to a very piquant situation where either inefficient rice husk-based water boilers have been installed,or solar heating systems are in use with no efficient systems for avoiding flow of cold water before hot water at the faucet.Havent you noticed in many hotels how you drain up to 15 or 20 litres before you begin to get hot water at the tap Sanction plans must demand the use of circulation pumps that mitigate such thermal loss in insulated hot water lines.
All these need a vigorous set of regulations from the town planning department of every city.A set of smart implementing agencies need to be managing these regulations to ensure compliance with sanction plans up to the point when occupancy certificates are issued.
By appealing to the good sense of consumers or residents we are not going to get far.Expecting the government to have the ability or the machinery to monitor implementation of regulations will be foolhardy.Every one of these steps outlined here will mean a sharp reduction in demand for energy and water,and an easing of the burden of waste management.As one urban planner told me recently,It is cities that turn wealth to waste,while our traditional farmers have always practised simple ways of turning waste to wealth. The first 10 cities in India account for 40% of all consumption of natural resources.With such legislation as these,we can get back to 1980 levels of demand for energy or water.
Rainwater harvesting has to become mandatory for all buildings be it a hotel,house,hospital or office.This will mean an entire two weeks of water supply for the entire city.People have to depend on the central grid for water that much less.And since you have no water without energy there would also be a sharp drop in energy demand with rainwater harvesting becoming part of mandatory compliance.Most parts of India receive 1m rain,and that means about 250,000 litres of water for every 100 square metres of roof areas,or about 3 million litres per acre of open lands.
Most of us dont seem to comprehend the serious challenge that we have in our cities,in terms of the burgeoning municipal solid waste.A law that ensures that no householder can put kitchen waste into plastic sachets and leave it at the gate will ensure that nearly 70% of all waste is not transported away from our homes.This will mean that we save a massive amount of as much as Rs 400 crores a year in a city like Bangalore,which is otherwise wasted by the city corporation on contractors who cart away and dont dispose of it responsibly.Most such waste is dumped indiscriminately at the edge of the city in lands that belong to others and cause death of livestock as well as high odour in farmlands on the periphery.
After 20 years of work in this domain,I am more than convinced that that without a legal mandate,depending merely on voluntary compliance is not going to help in redeeming the situation.
We can have many more green workshops.We can talk about ethical practices at the workplace,if you belong to the building industry.We can incentivize and offer awards to a few firms which are excelling at such best practices.None of these will work.The time for incremental solutions is past us.We need a quantum shift this is a writing on the wall we need to stop refusing to read
