THE CLIMATE BATTLE WILL BE WON OR LOST IN OUR CITIES.

Article written by Lisa De Vellis

Images courtesy: Prashant Kapoor / IFC.

Meet Prashant Kapoor: The man who’s helping green our world one city at a time

For Prashant Kapoor, Chief Industry Specialist for Green Buildings and Climate-Smart Cities at International Finance Corporation (IFC), this is a rallying cry. Cities collectively emit 70 percent of global greenhouse gases despite covering less than 3 percent of the earth’s land. The mammoth climate-change contribution from cities is undeniable, and with the urban population expected to double by 2050, it is poised to worsen.

If planned and sustained measures aren’t implemented in time, by 2050, energy demand will increase by 80 percent and energy-related CO2 emissions by 70 percent, which will result in a 3 to 6 degrees Celsius rise in average global temperatures, exceeding the globally agreed limit of 2 degrees. Five billion people will be impacted by water shortages, and 1.4 billion people will go without access to basic sanitation. It doesn’t end there. Air pollution will prematurely kill over 3.5 million people every year. Those most affected will likely be from cities in emerging economies.

Are we on an inevitable crash course toward destruction and scarcity? “No,” maintains Prashant, “we can do more. The greening of cities is a major part of the global solution.” With proper analysis and resources, cities can reverse these trends. Prashant is optimistic. “It’s doable, it’s sexy and it doesn’t have to be a burden,” he says.

The Apex Of Green Cities

Equipped with a graduate degree in Architecture from Manipal Institute of Technology, India, and a Master’s degree in Energy Efficient Buildings from Oxford Brookes University, UK, Prashant’s career revolves around making climate-change mitigation measures accessible, financeable, appealing and implementable for the greening of cities and the built environment. In fact, prior to joining IFC in 2010, Prashant was Director at WSP Consultants, London, where he led the engineering planning of Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, now considered a pioneer in zero-carbon urban development.

Marrying his green city planning experience with the vast, and as yet untapped potential of green financing, Prashant and his team at IFC developed the APEX (Advanced Practices for Environmental Excellence in Cities) Green Cities Program, which was officially launched at COP27 in 2022. Yoking the creative design and enabling environment of green cities with the incentives of green finance, Prashant’s work with APEX demonstrates a right-brain-leftbrain approach. It’s how he operates and where he excels as a visionary, finding unity and common ground in ideas that, superficially, appear polarized. This flair is aptly demonstrated in the yin and yang of his two favorite cities: Singapore and Chennai.

He loves Singapore, the place he now calls home, “because of its deliberate order.” Singapore manages public amenities such as transport “like a well-oiled machine,” he says, speaking to a belief that cities can function as platforms for efficient societies. In contrast, he also loves “the chaos and beauty of cities like Chennai and Hyderabad.” Such cities are “vibrant, living, breathing organisms. But there’s order in the disorder,” he says, “that not only allows creative ideas, food and architecture to flourish, but it also fosters a uniquely competitive environment that encourages creative frugality, innovation and entrepreneurship.”

To enable the transition of cities to low-carbon and resource-efficient growth pathways, Prashant conceived the APEX Online App as a key feature to support the APEX Green Cities Program. This data-rich app allows cities to map out different measures and evaluate their cost, feasibility, and impact to identify the most relevant and cost-effective green infrastructure solutions and policy interventions in a given city’s context. “But,” reveals Prashant, “there’s a secret sauce.”

Rather than treating cities as monoliths, APEX facilitates relationships, working with governments on policy, with banks on finance and with the private sector on nudging investment opportunities. “It’s about demonstrating the business case where everyone benefits,” Prashant asserts.

Through IFC’s broad range of advisory and investment solutions, and through the dynamic functioning of the APEX platform, the APEX-IFC team arms cities with the knowhow to most effectively reduce carbon emissions. “The idea is to uplift cities and make them more visible and desirable,” says Prashant. Communities can push back, however, with citizens often resisting government-led initiatives. Prashant counters the naysayer mentality by demonstrating that cities can do the right things and that everyone can benefit.

Such a unified and win-win approach can go a long way in making communities more trusting of leadership in pursuit of a common goal to improve quality of life through climate-smart infrastructure and policy measures. APEX even recognises the efforts of Green City Champions – mayors and environmental and urban planning officials – who can motivate and inspire their conterparts in other cities. “You have to make [upgrading to green] a value proposition,” Prashant believes. Everybody wins. Especially cities of the future.

GREEN CITY SPOTLIGHT: MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA

On track to a future-ready path is Medellin, Colombia’s second largest city, and the first city in Latin America to use the APEX Green Cities platform to create a green investment roadmap to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. The resulting Medellin Climate Investment Opportunities Diagnostic (CIOD) report identifies twenty high-impact, climate-smart municipal and private investments across the built environment and energy, transportation, waste and water sectors. Totalling approximately USD 2,805 million, nearly 70 percent of this investment will come from the private sector.

The Edge Of Green Buildings

When it comes to delivering on sustainable solutions, Prashant’s experience and expertise extends to the built environment as well. The precursor to APEX, EDGE – a green building certification system – makes it easy to design and certify resource-efficient and zero-carbon buildings. Whilst green building certification systems such as LEED existed prior to EDGE, there was a barrier to entry. At IFC, Prashant, along with his team, developed the EDGE software application tool to fill this gap, making upgrading to green development – and reaping the benefits of doing so – accessible and attainable for all building types and across the socio-economic spectrum. Prashant explains:

Most previous certifications were in the commercial space. EDGE takes that certification into housing, low-income housing especially; EDGE doesn’t discriminate. Saving operational energy really makes the project more affordable to live in, alleviating issues such as fuel poverty. There are lots of things developers can do in the low income space.

By mainstreaming resource-efficient buildings, EDGE is already playing an active role in 2050 Net Zero targets. Till date, EDGE had certified over 59 million square meters of floor space, reducing emissions by nearly 1.3 million tCO2 and saving nearly 100 million cubic meters of water per year. Under his leadership, IFC has created a green buildings portfolio that totals more than USD 10 billion, both directly and through financial intermediaries.

FOR PRASHANT, GREEN IS THE NEW BLACK

Combating climate change isn’t just a day job for Prashant. He manifests the green ethos in his personal life too. He maintains a vegetarian diet and doesn’t own a car. He even gave up wearing sleeves to live in Singapore because he refuses to have air conditioning in his home. Surely a delight to his local shopkeepers, he closes their doors as a matter of routine when passing by because he simply cannot bear to see the wasted air conditioning leech out into the open.

Despite his senior position, Prashant addresses issues not from a siloed perspective but from a grounded, pragmatic and inclusive space where he can effect real change in the quest to protect our resources, our cities and our planet. He credits his wife, Aparna, for supporting him throughout his journey while often having to put her career on the back burner. “I’m lucky to have something driving me in life,” he reflects, “of being able to have at least some say in how the world is going.”

If the climate battle is to be won in our cities, the onus rests squarely on whether people, policy, innovation and finance can align. And that is precisely where Prashant’s strengths lie. To end the climate war, however, is ultimately a matter of deep personal commitment and of ensuring the wellbeing of future generations. “Seeing my daughter be proud of me,” he says, “is all the motivation I need.” c

Prashant can be contacted at: PKapoor1@ifc.org Images courtesy: Prashant Kapoor / IFC.