Buying a green property- How much money can be saved?

 Q &A from Dr. Chandrashekara Hariharan, Executive Chairman and Co-founder of BCIL ZED Homes, Worlds Leading Green Home Builders.

Green Business Ideas to make money

Being an ecopreneur is the way to go! The water treatment manufacturing segment of Indian industry is among the fastest growing in India today with a CAGR of over 22%. 

But if you are looking for small entrepreneurship and little green business ideas to earn a good livelihood, there are about 20 such business avenues that I recommend to young aspirants who ask me. Write in at zed@zed.in for more details and insights.

 

Mr. Chandrashekar Hariharan
Executive Chairman
and Co-founder of BCIL ZED Homes.

How we incorporate green features in existing homes to save money -- some tips on the same

The green techie will call this a 'retrofit' solution. In your home, you can do this, right now and today. If yours is a house with two washrooms and two ACs and a pump for the borewell outside [I am assuming yours is an independent home], step out and buy a new set of faucets and showers that are water-efficient; a set of CFLs and LEDs if you have already not done this; a new pump with a 5 star rating, spend about Rs. 20,000 to harvest rainwater and charge them back to the borewell at home. 

If you can afford it, spend about Rs 70,000 [there are loan schemes that make it easy on payment] and install a sewage treatment plant for just your home and reuse that water for gardens and carwash and floor swabs [it is odorless and as good as fresh water except that we don't recommend you drink it]. 

You will reduce demand for fresh water 60-70 per cent. Grow a second skin of creeper plants [money plant, bougainvillae, the slow-growing ivy ] and protect your west and south walls from the direct beat of the sun. Oh, there is a lot you can do. Write in at zed@zed.in and ask for a copy of Zediquette. It will help you know of the things you can do all by yourself at little cost.

Buying a green property- How much money can be saved?

A Platinum certified energy-efficient green building can save you about 50 per cent on energy bills and about 50 per cent in the demand for fresh water, which means again less energy bills since your use of pumps for borewells or transporting water from distant places is cut sharply. 

Typically a green residential building can save you upto Rs 30,000 a year at the very minimum for a 2 bhk home with a family of four. There are homes in Gurgaon which pay up to a staggering Rs 35,000 a month as energy bills, with 2/3rds of that going for the central ACs!! Imagine the saving in such high end homes too. 

How common man can gain profit by going green ?

Take an Inverter-based AC that uses 0.3 units of power to every hour, or about 2 units to a night of use in summer. The conventional AC will use thrice as much, or 6 units for 8-hours use. If the unit rate of power is Rs 10, in a month alone you have saved 120 units, or about Rs 1200 or about Rs 14400 in the very first year. The inverter AC of course costs about Rs 30,000 more. But in less than 2-2.5 years you have 'recovered' the additional capital cost, and for the rest of the life of the AC, you save money by the month, by the year. Same applies for pumps at home. 

And to induction stoves, and refrigerators. If you built a house with proper thermal insulation, your cost of cooling the building will be less. This specially works for offices where the cost of ACs account for 65-67 per cent of the energy bill. If you have a glass wall on the west face or the south face in latitudes of 12 deg north to 15 deg N [Kanyakumari to say Nagpur] your ACs work overtime and add to your power bill hugely. Passive and low energy architecture therefore play a vital role. If it's latitudes of above 20 deg North, the solar axis beats the north and east walls more. 

Suggest some eco friendly products which give good returns?

When you set out to buy any consumer durable, or FMCG, first check if the product is rated for energy efficiency. A 5 star rating offers you the least energy use. When you buy a dishwasher ask the shop assistant for the energy rating. Ask a friend who is either an electrician or electrical engineer. Do your diligence on performance parameters. 

These days the web world offers you many ways of doing such comparisons. Manufacturers compete with each other to put out such information in order to help the buy decision. There are any number of such 'eco friendly' products which give 'good returns'. Fans that work at 30 watts [conventional : at 75 watts]; ACs that work at 30 per cent the efficiency of the regular Split AC and at just 10 per cent of the old energy guzzling and noisy window ACs. 

There are other such options in every segment today of home and office appliances and lifts and manufacturing equipment. Look for waste water treatment plants, big and small, that convert the kitchen throwaways into rich compost. 

Give some tips on easy ways to go green ?

A simple calculus you could bear in mind as 'tips' to go green are : Look at energy, water, waste. Consider under each category what you can do to reduce consumption without compromise of comfort and convenience. Work on each. 

Do the maths on the energy units consumed, for example, by a 10-year-old pump at home. If you bought a new one in exchange for the old, you will find the additional cost you incur will be 'recovered' by you in less than 2 to 4 years simply because of the energy efficiency that the new pump offers. Same goes for any number of other appliances you use in homes, factories, offices, hospitals and hotels. You could be working anywhere. 

Check the google, There are any number of sites that offer you such 'tips'. All you need is your own willingness and conviction.

What according to you is going green ?

Green is not about planting trees. Green is not about pretty landscaping and growing a lush, dense outcrop of plants. Green is not the 'desert of green' you find in a tea plantation, for example. Green is not a lush looking paddy or sugarcane farm, for it is the most 'ungreen', water-guzzling, high carbon-emitting spectacle. Green is about what you and I do, and Governments and urban planning bodies do to reduce the abuse of natural resources -- energy, water, primarily. 

Can you go with a solar power pack of 2 kw in your house and reduce your grid power use by 40 per cent? That's green, because you reduce your grid demand, and if all of us did that, the governments will be forced to scale down generation of power from thermal, nuclear and hydel resources. Reducing thermal power generation will ease demand for coal, and so forests will not be cut down for mining the stuff. 

If you go decentralize your energy and water systems, you will help go green. If you treat waste right at home and did not add to the city load carelessly and expected the municipal truck to take away the waste from your house, you will have gone green. These are just a few examples. Visit www.zed.in and www.factor4.in. You will find other aids to go true green.

How much money we can save every month by going green ?

Well there are two kinds of savings. In money terms, it can be anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 depending on what you have as appliances at home. If it is an office space of, say, 10,000 sft, and if your current cost of energy and water is about Rs 20 per sft, this can drop dramatically by about 4-5 per sft. There are large organisations which pay energy bills of Rs 60 lacs a month!! Some simple 'green' installation can bring this down by Rs 20 lac every month. The other kind of 'saving' is about enhancing water security. 

For example, if the demand for fresh water is reduced by say 50 per cent, it means your dependence on borewells [that are threatening to dry up across every city and town] and municipal supply [which are nearly non-existent in our big cities] is reduced sharply. That means you get your water needs met without the threat of scarcity.

What does "Going green" mean & how can it help common man to save money?

It means you focus on buying the right appliances that relate to energy, water and waste. They save you these resources while saving money. They offer you water security and energy security, not always financial savings since the cost of water is next to nothing. A simple change in the taps at your house to efficient faucets with rating of under 6 liters per minute [against the conventional 12 liters] and a few such other water fixtures can save you as much as 100,000 liters a year to a family of four! 

 
Biodiversity Conservation India 

#31, Vyalikaval,
Near Bashyam Circle,
Bangalore - 560003

  zed@zed.in
 080-4018 4018

Reeni 9686 192671 
Maria 9686 692327 
Tel: +91 80 4018 4018 (20 lines) 

Want to go Green? 
Sms Zed to 56767 
www.ecobcil.com

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