Home / PEOPLE / Business / The Green Visionary

[More Images]

While sharing his green vision in this interaction with Niranjan Mudholkar, Dr Prem Jain, Chairman of the Indian Green Building Council emphasises that the cost of a green building is only 2-5% more and is likely to come down further in the next two years

You were one of the founding fathers of the Green Building movement in India. Are you happy the way it has been evolving over the years?
Yes. The Green Building Movement is a wonderful journey to be on. I have been involved from day one along with Karan Grover and Jamshyd Godrej. The journey has been quite wholesome.

Advertisement

COMMENT   'Integrated Green Building Design with Sustainable Master Planning' enable the built-environment to be 'Environmentally   1 Comments Read more comments »

A challenge that still remains is the fact that the cost of green buildings is still higher than conventional buildings in India. The reason being we do not have enough products in India that are truly green. Of course, many people claim that their products are green but we do not know if that’s true. We do not have a system to validate the greenness of a product. Consequently, the evolution of green products in India has been very limited.
If we had more true green products, our movement would have progressed further. Therefore, we hold a congress where we encourage green products. We had five products when we started and now we have more than 100. I hope in a couple of years we should have more than a 1000 products. When the competition for green products grows the pricing will naturally come down and that will be a boost for the green building movement.

You were instrumental in setting up the Indian Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ISHRAE). Tell us something about that journey and ISHRAE’s synergy with the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC).
Ishrae has been a member of a society called ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers). I joined ASHRAE when I was a young student in Benares in the 50s. We always lacked something like this in India. So I started ISHRAE in 1980 on the footprints of Ashrae. It is identical to ASHRAE but Indianised.
In India, our best learning comes from shop-floor operators. They are the most knowledgeable and I have always learnt from them. I wanted to keep ISHRAE open to these people and hence I avoided the white-collared approach of ASHRAE.
For three years, ISHRAE operated from my home with 4-5 colleagues of mine joining in. We didn’t have a lot of money and our wives contributed about Rs100 per meeting from the month’s grocery account.
The second challenge was retaining members. After one year, we realised that the annual members were not renewing their memberships. So we started the concept of life-membership with a minimal fee of Rs500 per member. Today, we have 10,000 members with more than 20% being non-degree holders. To me, they are the best members.
Now, we have 35 autonomous chapters of ISHRAE operating profitably across the country. When we wanted to buy our first office way back in 1989-90, we were struggling to raise Rs7.5 lakh. Today, we have more than Rs7.5 crore in our coffers.
When we started IGBC, we realised that there was a need to have synergy between IGBC and ISHRAE. Fortunately, this has happened. About 3-4 years ago, the then president saw merit in linking ISHRAE with IGBC. It is now one of our strong supporters.
The logic is simple. Most of the energy in a building – particularly in a commercial building – goes in for air conditioning. If I have to make a Green Building then I must define my Air Conditioning low. IGBC and ISHRAE have been growing up like twin sisters and I treat them as my children.

According to the joint findings of Grant Thornton and Assocham released on March 26, 2010 in a paper titled ‘Indian Real Estate Vision 2020’, majority of builders and developers are still wary about adopting the green building concept due to the increased cost - 25-35% more than conventional construction. Your views.
I strongly disagree about the cost factor being so high for Green Buildings. Moreover, the cost varies with the type of certification of the green building – silver, gold and platinum. A basic green building costs only 2-5% more than a conventional building. The 2% cost is for someone like Vidur Bharadwaj who would have anyway built a good building. Five percent more is for someone who doesn’t take efforts in having a well-designed building. Any old building would cost about 5% more to convert it into a green building. Yes, a platinum certified building would cost about 10-12% more.
But I can’t agree that the costs are 25-35% more. In fact, a green building also doesn’t require more time to build. That’s why you find the Hiranandanis, the Rahejas, the Lodhas, the GMRs and many others going for green buildings. I did the Hyderabad Airport for GMR and it got a silver rating.
Why will they make a silver rated Green airport if it costs them 25% more? It actually cost GMR about 7-8% more at that time. Today, we are doing the Delhi airport for the same Group. And it is costing them only 5% more to get a green certification. When it is done, it will be the largest airport in the world to be certified Green.
The GMR Group is going green because it realises the merits. It knows that a green airport will be a lot healthier and will consume lesser energy. In fact, the energy savings for the airport would be around 20-25%. This will easily offset the 5% investment made in going green.
Today we have about 596 buildings in our country registered with us as green buildings amounting to approximately 380 million sq ft. These people have not paid 25-35% more to go green.

---