On March 27, 2017 4thConference on Green Buildings was held at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi. The conference was titled: “Upscaling Green Building at City Level' and was organized by Sharp Developments with the support of School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi as the Knowledge Partner for the series of four conferences.  This culminated a series of four conference supported by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India under the 12th Five Year Plan: Energy Efficient Solar/ Green Buildings.

This Conference was supported by the Central Electronics Limited (CEL) and Skill Council for Green Jobs (NSDC supported). Past supporters have included National Housing Bank.

Prof.Dr.MeenakshiDhote, Head of Department of Environmental Planning, School of Planning and Architecture set the tone and inaugurated the morning discussion highlighting the essence of Sustainability and Green concepts within the architecture and planning envelope.

Prof.Dr.Mandeep Singh, Dean of Studies, School of Planning and Architecture, welcomed the guests on behalf of SPA. He was stressing over the enormous energy requirements of the building sector (embodied as well as recurrent use of energy), also discussed about the increasing use of Renewable Energy in India from Megawatts to Gigawatts, and the role of this source of energy as one of the major clean energy sources available. He also introduced about the financial assistance provided by MNRE to SPA, to make it a Green Campus.

Prof. Chetan Vaidya, Director, School of Planning and Architecture, added on to the dialogue while emphasising the essential role of building partnership, providing education, and capacity building to ensure effective implementation. He also discussed the importance of recent global events including Paris  agreementhence enlisting the 3 major current global agendas (Paris Declaration on  Climate Change, Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda), mentioning the need to simultaneously start talking about a 'new urban where Green Building and Sustainability become important parameters. He briefly spoke about the need of different kinds of city level initiatives to deal with every city being distinctive in character. Most importantly, he emphasised the need of communication to ensure implementation. He also highlighted how one model fit for all in not a good model while moving forward towards sustainability as India is diverse and face difficulties to regulate with one single model or strategy hence one should look for more diverse ideas. 

The conference had participation from architects, planners, developers, vendors and Government institutions like DDA, MCD, EDMC; MOEF, HUDA, BSES, CPWD and institutional organizations which helped constructive dialogue towards identifying a collaborative approach in making our cities Green and eventually Smart cities. It served as a platform to discuss the existing guidelines; strategy for promotion of renewable energy, waste management, and energy efficiency interventions at the city level– both at comprehensive planning stage as well as retrofitting of existing infrastructure.

The Conference provided platform for knowledge exchange that widened the market insights on sustainable habitat models and policy guidelines and framework. The conference engaged  24 eminent speakers and over 57 delegates from across the sector including organisations like IL & FS, Ireo, Fourth Partner Energy and BSES.  The conference substantiated distinct case studies and thesis by students and faculty of the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi on topics like Integration of Renewable Energy in cities.

Ar. Alankrita, Sr.Advisor Sustainability, Sharp Developments, highlighted the need for integrating building concepts at city level, and emphasised the need of moving from building to city level discussions. She cited that the interface between the two levels is very important, and it's essential that the right fabric exists to promote that interface. Also from her architectural perspective, she addressed the issues of Heat Island Effect and Biodiversity loss, while talking about large scale mass integration of solar in the built environment.

Mr. SrajanMangal, Senior Manager, BSES Delhi, highlighted the role of BSES as the first company in Delhi to install net metering. He clearly cited that as per Elec. Act it is required to source 5% of total energy from RE sources. Thus BSES promotes all its users to go solar and their management is open to all RE ideas. He also raised the concerns of discoms about the concerns of consumers not getting the right information, flooding of solar installers in the market and hence a great confusion, billing and installation related issues, complaint handling issues, and solar being in contradiction to their business models as electricity distributors. These issues are being worked upon by various agencies in consultation. He also contemplated about the RE assisted pump program of BSES wherein BSES installed 50-60 solar water pumps in Govt. schools. He clearly stated the need of getting all the discoms on the same page as all solar network is to be connected to the network of BSES in the end. 

Mr. Rakesh Solanki, Waste Management Head, Segregationstragtergy.com,highlighted  the efforts of Ministry of Environment and Forestsfor revising the Waste Management Rules (6 new waste management rules came up during March to April 2016). He brought up the serious issue of Plastic Waste Management within cities. Plastic, which make whole of the waste useless, and is almost impossible to segregate, ends up in landfills or is burned. It wasn't dealt separately until December 2016 when these rules came up. According to him the essence lies in source segregation.

Mr. C.K Varma , CE CSQ (E), Central Public Works Departmentquoted about the role of Unified guidelines.His dialogue speculated over the provision for waste management, energy efficiency and water conservation as basic minimum facilities mandatory for human existence today. He shared some examples of inclusion of Rain waters harvesting techniques, roof top solar provision and energy efficient practices as government initiatives within Delhi. While talking about up-scaling these initiatives, he mentioned about a pilot project (discussion in nascent stage) for installing roof-top solar at neighbourhood level in 5 government colonies.

Mr S.P. Pathak,Commissioner (Planning), Delhi Development Authority, presented the various master plan provisions catering to Sustainable Development and the provision of Green Buildings in the Unified Building Byelaws. He also mentioned about other important regulations and National capital region plan in 2021. There is need for regulation for development and all of these will be applicable to different scales. He also pondered over Delhi Development Authority’s special area regulations unified guidelines in sync with other relevant regulations. He emphasised on self-sufficient development and Management of land use resources. 

Prof.Dr. Mahavir, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, who has guided the previous three conferences, recapitulated the significance of upscaling and the learnings from previous three conferences. As a faculty member of a premier academic institute of the sector, shared his thoughts about conducting an academic exercise to study how the technologies discussed earlier can be taken up at ward or sub-zonal level to come up with the concept of 'Green Neighbourhoods'. 
Mr.Arpo Mukherjee from Skill Council for Green Jobs,carried forward the remarks of Dr. Praveen Saxena, DG at Skill Council and shared his opinion about skilling the manpower to ensure a greener development. Training the management to equip for sustainable growth of the society and Low carbon based sustainable solution.

Mr. Punit Agarwal, IGBC, in his presentation while sharing some examples of cities, addressed the concept of 'Green Cities' as a combination of green buildings. So one should not just directly think about cities but go about with buildings and hence form Green Cities.

Ar. Deependra Prasad, DPAP, brought back the discussion to the 4 essential learnings from our old cities - walkability, city expansion v/s compaction, provision of mixed landuse and mixed neighbourhood, and provisions within cities for density v/s height (tall buildings loosing connect to the ground). He addressed the essential issues of Sustainable Development - what to build, how much to build, how much is enough, and where to stop. He highlighted the essence of greenness within old cities and their forms. He quoted that at first one should work to make a city that is not so smart but, much happier. One should look into the provision within the city for destiny vs height and cities should be compacted.

Mr. Manik Jolly, Founder, Grid Empowering Lives, added on to the discussion over the two aspects of Green - Generation and Efficiency. He also flagged the issues in the system wherein only the government is empowered to authorise solar energy implementation. Moreover we get subsidy only if we work with government listed vendors. One cannot grow with such restrictions hence government has to support these efforts. He added on to the idea of adapting to earlier systems, and making cities self-sufficient/ sustaining through new technologies, and skilling young professionals.One should have holistic views on eradication of the use of plastics. He also mentioned that all the vendors should be registered in the government’s registry and incentives to the user should be given to all irrespective of vendors are not authorised under the government. He closes by mentioning that a lot more space should be allocated for green development.

Prof.Dr.MeenakshiDhote, SPA,whose guidance has facilitated the close engagement of Department of Environmental Planning, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi moderated the closing session by mentioning about the deliberations of the earlier three conference and how each of them extended the discussions to finally arrive at logical conclusion for the 4th conference which focussed on green buildings at the city level. She emphasized how upscaling of green building and energy efficient buildings has to be a sustained process and beyond a building level. She re-iterated the need to think at all scales for an effective implementation of green buildings in the evolving [policy framework. Lastly, she highlighted the need to work on the steps towards clean energy for a better developmental framework.

The conference generated understanding of solar energy-based design,planning parameters, energy efficient design, integration of renewable energy into building design,  waste management strategies, and implementations through display of wide number of case studies; interactive panel discussions and identified specific gaps and directions for taking solar from building to city level.

The conference highlighted need for further coordination of efforts between various government organizations, builders and industry to enable comprehensive planning, as well as strong need for assimilation and dissemination of data and data mapping in the sector. 

The conference received positive feedback from the participants and valuable guidance and feedback from the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi which will be captured in final report and recommendations to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, Government of India.

Going forward, organizers will prepare detailed proceedings from the Conference and be guided by insightful observations by Pro. Chetan Vaidya, Director School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi which highlighted challenges noting that as a result of high diversity, and face difficulties to regulate with one single model or strategy hence one should look for more diverse ideas one model fit for all in not a good strategy while moving forward towards sustainability in green building design. 

Sharp Developments has been promoting sustainable built habitat with the support of Ministry of New and Renewable Energy with focus on Solar/Green Buildings, solar integration in Buildings and this is the 4th Green Building conference organized with the support of the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi as the Knowledge Partner.For more details, please log in at:www.sharpdevelopments.org.