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Sustainable, energy-efficient building: the BCIL approach By Chandrashekar Hariharan, Biodiversity Conservation (India) Ltd
one of the many species affected by climate change – the number could be anywhere from four million to 8.5 million, according to various scientific and historical sources. But there is clear evidence that human excesses have caused significant environmental damage over the past 100 years, and that we now need to find ways to reverse this trend or to use natural-resource management that enable efficiency while continuing conventional development objectives. One hugely significant element of this problem is that nearly 50 per cent of all fossil energy consumed in the world goes to just one industry: building. This understanding is essential if humans are to find effective ways of reducing the consumption of fossil fuel and the damage it does to the environment. For 50 years, many in the environment sector have focused on how to get governments to enact policies that will make businesses behave more ‘responsibly’ in their use of natural resources. Embedded in this logic is a notion that there is a conflict between markets and the environment.
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Beyond the Green Brigade Over the past decade there has been significant growth in India, with a compounded annual average growth of eight per cent on gross domestic product. New avenues have opened out, enabling some ‘renegade’ institutions in the development sector to move away from ‘activism’, beyond the current crop of the ‘Green Brigade.’ Instead, they are looking for solutions using technology, both ancient and modern, which can continue to serve the conventional objectives of economic development while being sensitive over the use of natural resources. Sangharsh (in Hindi, meaning struggle or political activism) and nirmaan (development that brings social and economic value) represent polar opposites that have been seen by environmentalists and governments in India – and throughout the world – as mutually exclusive, conflicting objectives. Management gurus today are beginning to see that the world’s business sector and governments have to take a different view. C. K. Prahalad, hailed recently by BusinessWeek as a business prophet, says: “Increased efficiency through innovation is the key to sustainable development.” Arthur D. Little talks of how
Basement structure
Independent home super structure
UMANS ARE JUSt
1150
12000
1144.12
1100 10089.56 1050 CO2 emissions – MT
CO2 emissions – MT
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1000 966.1 950
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1165
0
0 Zed partial basement
Conventional full basement
Zed load bearing hybrid structure
Source: BCIL
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Conventional RCC framed structure
BCIL’s raison d’etre In 1994, a fledgling group of development workers in the subHimalayan districts of India chose to move away from ‘social models’ of development with grants and subsidies. The group established an enterprise that sought to identify an array of technologies in building, water and energy management that could demonstrate resource-sensitivity while also being financially viable. Eleven years down the road, Biodiversity Conservation (India) Ltd. (BCIL) has shown that sustainability can be a central platform for business growth. In 1995, its first year of operations, BCIL had a business value of USD 500,000. From this modest beginning, it has grown to become a USD 25 million enterprise. This clearly suggests that markets are both willing and in need of processes and technologies that make no compromise on the defined urban frameworks of development, comfort and convenience, while delivering efficiency in natural resources. This philosophy lies at the core of BCIL, which is India’s largest Sustainable Built Environment (SBE) enterprise today. BCIL has made a case in every business and development forum for ending the present perverse system of offering subsidies and incentives in the form of artificially lower prices for ‘green’ technologies. BCIL sees a highly productive marriage between the two forces of growth and environmental responsibility, which need to be made compatible. With 330 per cent annual growth registered in just the past year of performance, BCIL is a standing testimony for moving away from such regressive thinking on ‘nurturing’ green development. Since its inception, BCIL has promoted successful business models that have mainstreamed the ‘alternative’. In
doing so, it has shown that governments must first dispel the notion that there is a trade-off between growth and being environmentally friendly. As a developing country that imports 70 per cent of its energy, India cannot ignore the need for strategies in the building industry that will reduce consumption by enhancing the country’s energy security. Energy security is not primarily about generation so much as it is about achieving energy efficiency. The question that BCIL has often asked is: if economic agents reduce their energy use, and therefore their costs, how can this be bad for the growth and productivity of a company or government? If you observe the quality of a product and service, or customization in the marketplace, you will see that until very recently, these goals were considered costly to achieve. What BCIL has effectively done over the past decade, with every evolving project, is to break free from this dominant logic and use quality and customization as means to both acquire customers and reduce costs. This is both applicable at the capital stage of construction, and at the post-project stage when reduced energy and water use brings financial savings to customers. The graphs accompanying this article illustrate the approach, the strategy and the process management methods that are employed to achieve such goals at the brick-and-mortar level. Incentives and subsidies only encourage excess use, and waste precious resources. Energy efficiency does not need any incentive, for it always shows a positive impact on corporate bottom lines across the board. That is adequate motivation for companies like BCIL, and should be so for all corporations. Subsidizing energy or water costs, instead of focusing on their efficiency, is against growth, as indeed it is against sustainability. As a corporate enterprise, BCIL has been mindful of the comfort and convenience that our products offer to our customers, be it in the segment of the urban rich or the rural poor. Normal market behaviour suggests that higher comfort means higher use of resources.
External walls
Home lighting
“sustainability is the key to winning tomorrow’s markets.” And Kofi Annan said recently: “I hope corporations understand that the world is not asking them to do something from their normal business; rather it is asking them to do business differently.”
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CFL lights
Conventional solid concrete blocks and burnt clay bricks
Source: BCIL
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Halogen and flouroscent lights
In every one of the 1.4 million square feet [or 150,000 square metres] of building projects that the enterprise is executing today, BCIL has looked at implementation that pursues a fourpronged strategy for bringing natural resource efficiency: • Environmental compatibility • Economic efficiency • Endogeneity • Equity. These are addressed while focusing on two primary ideas: 1. How to improve transport energy within our campus areas 2. Building efficiencies in home energy use – this covers better washing machines, refrigerators, air-conditioners and water coolers; smarter lighting systems; efficient cooking systems and water heating systems. BCIL’s adherence to these values, as a profit-making company, is non negotiable. BCIL is about the human spirit; our mission statement is merely a hollow catchphrase. As an organization, we have pushed the boundaries of economic possibility, always knowing that we will not bend to curtail that spirit or the soul of our company. With this bedrock foundation, we have created an entirely new business model in India, which offers us the opportunity to grow exponentially as an organization. If the past five years has shown a cumulative growth rate of a staggering 5,000 per cent – from USD500,000 to USD25 million – the next three years (financial years 2007-2010) will take us to a top line revenue, on projects that are already committed to being executed, to the region of USD150 million. The bulk of the revenues today arise out of sustainable buildings, while our businesses in areas of sustainable built environment – water supply to the urban and rural poor; organic farm products that enhance growth potential and improve soils; and afforestation with corporate partnerships – are all well on the way to becoming robust revenue models over the coming years. Water heating
While many analysts have successfully outlined contours of such strategies for the building industry as a view from the sky, little is available in the world from companies that have successfully created projects and management systems that recognize these imperatives at the stages of design, architecture, and further down into the various components of execution. There is either a fixed mindset that refuses to comprehend the compatibilities that lie between successful business models and ecological compatibility, or there is an unwillingness to invest in innovation and incubation that can show the way for the future. The idea in itself is not new, of course. Inventors like Thomas Alva Edison in the late nineteenth century regretted their inability, or lack of time to work on technological directions for such a future: “We’re like tenant farmers,” said Edison, “chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy – the sun, wind and tide.” With breathtaking foresight, Edison added, “I’d put my money on solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until coal and oil run out before we tackle that. I wish I had more years left.” Case study: T-Zed The T-Zed campus is the first of its kind. Located at Airport Whitefield Road, Bangalore, this five-acre site comprises 95 homes built on the principles of sustainable resources. Every aspect of T-Zed has been designed to conserve natural resources and to have minimal impact on the environment. In these homes, built-in, customized environment-friendly (brinebased), zero electricity fridge-freezers, fully controlled air-conditioning based 100 per cent on fresh air, and built-in energy-efficient lights are among the features that help to bring down energy consumption in the home while preserving comfort levels and ensuring market value. At another project of ours, BCIL Collective, we have devised air conditioning systems that keep homes dust-free and cool Street lights
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Zed LED/CFL street lights
Conventional hot water geysers
Source: BCIL
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Halogen lamps
Photo: Harris Backer Blending aesthetics and sustainability: Club Zed, India’s first carbon-neutral residential campus that hosts 95 homes in the Silicon City of Bangalore
using energy-efficient appliances such as earth tunnel venting systems, nocturnal cooling systems, or the stack effect, which draws ambient air and cools it by convection Intelligent lighting systems blend motion sensors, ambient light sensors and timers to ensure that lights are switched off when not needed. Compact fluorescent lamps and light emitting diodes are used, cutting power consumption by up to 80 per cent while protecting lighting efficiency. Washrooms are ventilated using noiseless, energy-efficient DC and AC fans. DC fans are powered by photovoltaic panels and run from dawn to dusk, while AC fans can be switched on and off as needed. External walls are built using soil-stabilised blocks, laterite blocks and surface engineering with stone chip plastered surfaces. This ensures that surfaces are non-erodable, need no external paint applications, and are thermally efficient. Green roofs or ‘sky gardens’ also contribute to the thermal comfort of the dwellings. These provide a planting space for every home while serving as thermal insulation for adjoining and lower-built spaces. Each sky garden uses lightweight mulch and coir pith instead of heavier soil, and is irrigated via a drip method. The degree of self-sufficiency enabled by this promotion of urban agriculture also helps to decrease the ‘food miles’ and encourage more organic urban agriculture. Rubberwood which is a non-forest timber is used for door shutters, and as flooring. Palm wood has been for external walkway decking. We have also used compressed coir door panesl for door shutters, while bamboo composites provide roofing for parts of the club and interior woodwork in places. These are local resources which cost less than imported timber and use less energy to produce, thus reducing carbon emissions. A centralised, district refrigeration system using an ammonia-based chilling unit means that there are no compressors in the individual refrigeration units installed in each home. This in turn enables better management of cooling needs and more space for storage within each fridge. A self-sufficient and secure water supply system is also provided, using rainwater collected from the roof and stored in a shallow aquifier, through a system of drains, percolation pits, trenches and wells. Trenches are shallow at ten metres, so
ground water is not depleted. Water treatment costs are reduced via direct tapping of rooftop rainwater. Each home also has ‘conscience meters’, monitoring electric watts and water consumption. As the number of electrical devices increases, so does power consumption. An electric watt meter fitted in each home indicates the wattage used at a particular time and thus allows users to monitor their power consumption and introduce efficiencies. Meters on the kitchen and bathroom taps help to monitor the volume of water used in litres.
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How BCIL goes about its business ‘Technology’ at BCIL is not some new-fangled, modern-day electronic wizardry. A 200-year-old traditional system of lift irrigation is as much ‘technology’ as is a microchip-based motion or temperature sensor that brings lighting efficiency. The key to decision-making in the organization has been a combination of six factors: • Cost (always relative to what you are ‘buying’) • Aesthetics (should gain acceptance among customers) • Function (must serve the basic purpose and not be there for its own sake) • Ease of execution (skills and material resources must be available within a reasonable distance and time), • Time (else, the organization fails as a delivery company) • Environment (has to be resource-sensitive and/or bring social value, or must bring domino impact of replicability and scale). Design must recognize the ‘Four E’s’ of Ecological compatibility; Economic efficiency; Endogeneity and Equity. Architecture must adhere to a six-strand approach entailing integrated management of all aspects that relate to: • Earth (avoid bricks that employ precious topsoil and use 400 deg C energy; use soil stabilized blocks) • Energy (both embodied energy and active energy use on consumption, while engineering active and passive elements on energy saving) • Water (infrastructure approaches and plans that help communities grow their own water; waste water management that reduces fresh water use) • Waste (to ensure that communities of companies in an office block or of homes in a residential enclave assume responsibility for managing the spectrum from degradable to toxic wastes) • Air (with passive cooling and active cooling systems that are energyefficient and ozone non-depleting) • Biomass (to improve the microclimate of a land zone in a way that reduces demands on cooling).