Mainstreaming Sustainability
Mainstreaming Sustainability
Country: India
Organization: Biodiversity Conservation(India)Limited
Field of Work: Water
Year the initative began: 1995
Project URL: http://www.ecobcil.com
* Main barrier addressed: Lack of access to equity/credit in the sector
* Main insight addressed: Connect solutions to the housing & finance sectors
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
Making a housing community of 100 homes, with zero-dependence on Municipal Water Supply and Sewerage Board, installing high energy efficiency on lighting systems and appliances, and offering the community carbon-free air-conditioning for every house, as a demonstration of urban development that is sustainable, and without compromise on urban comfort.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field?
1.Urban housing is headed toward massive water shortages with tankers transporting water from distant urban peripheries.
2.Energy becomes more expensive with demand always outstripping supply.
3.Water can be a good source of fresh water for flush tanks and gardens in urban homes.
4.Air-conditioning can be carbon-free as well as at half the energy cost.
Design at BCIL comes from lead-use innovation with planners, aiming constantly at enhancing urban comfort and convenience with BCIL's greater efficiency of natural resource use. The key is making homes affordable with more features to increase comforts. This makes housing projects more sustainable while the buyer secures greater benefits.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
Design at BCIL recognizes the need to sensitize use of resources in 6 Design Strands:
(a) earth material,
(b) energy,
(c) water,
(d) waste,
(e) air management and
(f) bio-mass and vegetation planning.
The delivery model cannot be effective if the following six factors are not fulfilled in the process of addressing the six Design Strands mentioned above. Six Execution Factors that make for successful delivery are:
(a) cost,
(b) time,
(c) aesthetics,
(d) function,
(e) Ease-of-Execution and
(f) environment sustainability.
(a) & (b) make for economic sustainability for BCIL. (c) & (d) are meet-the-customers' or beneficiaries' needs. (e) & (f) meet BCIL's own need to drive sustainable development.
Design-and-Execution, therefore, has to recognize:
(a) economic efficiency,
(b) ecological compatibility,
(c) equity, and
(d) endogeneity
How do you plan to expand your innovation?
The key to efficiency in housing in India is: micro-climate architecture that avoids heat gain with the right mix of materials, passive air-cooling and active air-conditioning systems that are natural and micro-region, specific solutions for water energy and waste management.
Nearly 80% of all such natural resource–sensitive approaches are common to all regions.
BCIL has contemplated many of these approaches to eco-conscious housing in a way that its first set of 16 managers are aware of the process and systems needed for replication of work tasks on each project. We work in different regions – Bangalore, Goa, Mysore, Western Ghats, Chennai and other cities. These projects are either housing colonies or tourism retreats. There will soon be low-energy office spaces which require central air-conditioning, but has to work with design recognizing local conditions of temperature, moisture, water availability, humidity, such other factors.
BCIL constantly works on training and enablement of its technicians and technologists. We invest constantly in increasing the depth of people management skills.
All these help in cutting down time for project completion and for enhancing reliability and performance of building management systems that are installed in each of the projects BCIL undertakes.
Do you have any existing partnerships, and if so, how do you create them?
BCIL has worked with many institutions across the world on a spectrum of issues that relate to water, energy and architecture. It has also been invited on Water Exchange Programmes for sharing our insights with many Guilds of Architecture and Engineering in north America, Europe and Asia.
We have no formal partnerships or strategic alliances yet. However, we learn from many domains that relate to each of the six areas of focus. Our learning comes from such open house exchanges between agencies. While we enable other organizations in building their capacities on climate-responsive architecture, we learn from them.
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact. We reduce ecological footprint with successful demonstration of business models that builders will soon emulate with more features that customers need while building technologies enhanced sustainable development.
What are the main barriers to creating or achieving your impact?
Main barriers to achieving impact are:
* Confidence of customers/beneficiaries in the reliability of building management systems in the long run: This can be proved by BCIL only with reliable performance in each of the different resource-sensitive building management systems.
* Trained skills on a large scale in the building industry among masons, carpenters, fabricators, engineers in civil/electrical/mechanical disciplines who can implement with well-established systems and procedures that are well-understood.
How many people have you served or plan to serve?
As of this year, BCIL has sensitively stewarded about 180 acres of land which are completely chemical-free; have built about 500 houses so far which are water-positive, offering substantial energy savings, 100% autonomy on waste disposal, 100% autonomy on water, 100% use of chemical-free paints and water-proofing materials, 100% ban on use of high-energy bricks, clay tiles and clay blocks.
We have so far served 5 communities of residential housing with each of them reaching an average of 100 houses.
In the next 2 years, we are building 800 more such sustainably built houses with 100% autonomy on energy, water and waste, with natural air-conditioning systems and thermal efficiency in all such houses.
We are also offering affordable housing for the urban middle class with costs under Rs.20 lakhs in some cases.
In the process of such sustainable building processes in the past, about 2,000 people have been trained on skill sets in soil stabilized blocks, carpentry with plantation timber and green manufacturers and vendors who are supported with business we can offer them for building materials and services they supply.
Please list any other measures of the impact of your innovation?
When people live in such communities that are sustainably developed, they realize that they are not buying a house, but are buying into a way of life that brings them a higher value in life.
BCIL's residential communities have awakened themselves to the new sensitivities of rational views of water and energy without having to compromise on comfort and convenience [there are 'water-conscience' meters that every shower and kitchen tap sports in these homes, for example – only to remind the user of water going down the drain].
Children numbering over 200 in all these communities have been the key instrument of change for the parents, with their insistence on changes that the parents will bring at home on the little daily demands of life and living.
In each of the communities, BCIL has seen a transformation in the children and in the parents. At BCIL T-Zed Homes, home-owners in the community have voluntarily created an eco-cell for ensuring sustainable parameters of building management are pursued and implemented with vigour and effectiveness.
Is there a policy intervention element to your innovation, if so please describe?
* BCIL has always achieved beyond norms of policy in each of the housing projects it has created so far. For example, dual plumbing systems for using treated water in flush tanks is not demanded by regulation as of now. However, BCIL has made this a norm in each of its housing projects.
* Another example is of the demand-side engineering of energy in terms of intelligent lighting systems in homes and in external lighting areas of each of our projects. This means 100% use of LED's and CFL's which bring 80% savings on energy in homes without any compromise to urban comfort. There are many such examples of how BCIL has gone beyond policy and has, indeed, been responsible for triggering initiatives from the government on such issues that sensitize use of water, energy.
* To take another example, BCIL does not create borewells in any of its projects and relies completely on a network of open wells that draw on only the shallow aquifers. This avoids damage to deeper reserves groundwater in each of the lands that BCIL works upon.
Exactly who are the beneficiaries of your innovation?
People from the middle classes (lower, middle and upper) who aspire for own homes which offer comfort, are affordable and address needs, of energy and water security in the long term.
These are lay people pursuing different professions, who do not have domain knowledge of buildings, but share our sensibilities on waste or sensible use of natural resources.
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
We are no different from any enterprise, though at the core we espouse only social objectives. We don't have a 'promoter' or 'investor' whose objective is personal financial gain, although all projects and initiatives have to be profit-making. All earnings of the organization go back toward activities that support further research in building technologies or energy and water management.
We secure no special benefits or subsidy. We are fully accountable to our customers for the value propositions that we offer on the homes that we sell to them. We are strongly embedded in the principles of sustainable development with economic efficiency at the level of capital cost as well as savings in maintenance costs, of the buildings.
We have banks supporting us with loans that come under normal commercial lending practice. We are not grant-based or donor-supported. And that is the key to BCIL's central aspiration of 'mainstreaming sustainability'.
Provide information on your finances and organization:
Current annual budget 2007/08: [At Project cost level] : US$ 9 million.
Annual budget 2006/07: US $ 7 million
Annual budget 2005/06: US $ 6 million
Grants, donations and awards, US $: None.
Since we are a for-profit enterprise, we have a very successful revenue model, making us the largest green builders in India at present. Our revenue from sales of our sustainably built houses in 2007/08 is US$ 12 million.
Annual Sale 2006/07: US $ 8 million
Annual sale 2005/06: US $ 8 million
We are headed toward a sharp shift in the scale of operations at BCIL in the two years ahead of us. Our annual budget for green buildings in 2008/09 alone will be about US$ 20 million, growing to US$ 30 million in 2009/10.
What is the potential demand for your innovation?
The housing shortage continues to be high in India. Market has not been a challenge for BCIL's ecohomes because of the number of features and benefits that these homes offer in comparison to the competition.
BCIL's Zed refrigerators which bring 30% energy-saving while employing carbon-free refrigeration, is now a product set for launch in the normal marketplace.
There are 8 patented products in building management systems that currently BCIL is now employing in all its housing projects.
Our estimation of the demand for BCIL's eco-homes or other eco-products is based on the rising demand for housing and the greater discerning market knowledge among buyers.
Our current people strength is 150 professionals drawn from design, architecture and all disciplines of engineering – civil and mechanical in particular.
What are the main barriers to financial sustainability?
More efficient processes for execution; and better management of vendor resources in green products and services
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
Our work on energy and water in the early years and our understanding of the need for alternate solutions for urban living. Our growing knowledge of the need for such efficiencies in both residential and commercial buildings in recent years. We saw our ability at offering solutions and technologies for water, energy, waste and air management systems. That led us eventually to develop our ability at making sustainable buildings that offer a positive, proactive response to climate change.
Please provide a personal bio.:
The founder, Chandrashekar Hariharan, is a Chartered Accountant of the early 80s who worked in the NGO sector in the mid-80's to the mid-90's, before seeing the need for mainstreaming sustainability in a way that the organization did not depend on donor assistance, but relied on normal commercial practices to offer value for money to customers while ensuring that the housing solutions of BCIL are firmly founded on principles of ecologically sound practices of sustainable development. Striking continuously the balance between Commerce and Conservation has been the challenge that BCIL has had to steer resourcefully. His work primarily in areas of water and energy management, and his continuing effort to advocate such concerns of easing the eco footprint have stood BCIL in good stead.
Contact Information:
Harsha Sridhar (harsha@ecobcil.com)
Head Of Design and Architecture cell
Biodiversity Conservation(India)Limited
