Ramakrishna Mission Students Home in Mylapore has bagged platinum rating for maintaining an eco-friendly campus
An aerial view of Ramakrishna Mission Home, which makes the best use of solar energy with the help
of solar rooftop panels. (Photo: DC)
CHENNAI: With the Central government announcing smart cities mission, there is an increased focus on adopting green initiatives. Chennai is emerging as one of the smarter metros in the country. Currently, Chennai ranks fourth among Indian cities with 313 projects with a built-up area of 311.41 million sq. ft going green. According to data with the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC), an arm of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) that provides green certification for buildings in the country, Chennai is already home for 88 certified eco-friendly buildings, of which 21 got platinum grade which is the highest category rating.
Of the total 313 registered projects with IGBC for green certification, 116 are green homes, 140 are commercial projects, 19 projects are city railway stations operated by MRTS and the remaining fall under the other rating systems like factories, landscape and existing buildings. In comparison with other big cities, Chennai is next to Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru that have 656, 358 and 320 registered green projects respectively. Renowned architect C.N. Raghavendran, who is also chairman, IGBC (Chennai), told Deccan Chronicle there has been increased awareness among both builders and buyers about the sustainable or green building concept.
“There is substantial increase in number of green projects in the last couple of years across the country and Chennai is surging ahead. The drastic change here is Chennai has always fared well when it comes to commercial green projects, but now the green homes concept is fast catching-up with all top builders making it a habit to go green. Also, with the state government announcing compulsory solar power plants atop all high-rise buildings, the number of green buildings would shoot-up in the near future.”
In fact, Chennai has some stand out performers. Ramakrishna Mission Students’ Home at Mylapore got platinum rating two months ago and is the fourth school in the country to get the ‘green’ recognition. Swami Satyajnanananda, secretary of the institution, which is 100 years old and provides free schooling for around 700 students, said Ramakrishna mission was adopting green initiatives for almost a decade now. “At the campus, we have a recycling plant, solar photo-voltaic plant that generates 600 units of power daily, solar thermal plant that taps natural sun light to convert water into steam which is used to cook food for students, biogas plant that produces methane gas and a one lakh litre underground sump with RO treatment facility to tap rainwater for drinking needs. IGBC gives score while rating the building and we secured 83 marks out of
100”.
Chennai also has the country’s first platinum rated green home ‘Vishwa Syamalam’ at Madipakkam. Kavin of En3 sustainability solutions, which is a green building consultant, said his firm alone was handling 300 green projects currently in India and close to 100 are from Chennai. “Even though the buyer may have to initially shell out five per cent extra to purchase a green home he/she will be making 25% saving on operating costs every month in terms of electricity and water charges. It’s a good bet and consumers are realising it.”
However, Jaideep Vivekanand of Green Evolution said the commercial and top construction firms whose project area size exceeds 20,000 sq.ft are naturally going for green certification because it helps them get environment clearance from Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF), but the challenge is to make small builders adopt the concept.
Some of the green buildings in Chennai are ITC Grand Chola Hotel, TCS Techno Park, Mahindra Technical Academy, L&T Ship Building Ltd, Hotel Leela, Shell Business Service Centre and Turbo Energy Limited, all with platinum certification. Platinum is followed by gold, silver and certified ratings.
In India, besides IGBC, TERI (The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi) with the support of Ministry of New and Renewable Energy issues ‘Griha’ (Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment).
( Source : deccan chronicle )
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