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A Convening Of Changemakers: Mumbai’s top minds working on building a more climate-resilient planet were at The Free Press Journal’s first conclave on sustainability, titled ‘Changemakers: Driving A Sustainable Maharashtra’. Organised as part of The Sustainability Network of the FPJ, the conclave comprised three panel discussions, on infrastructure, energy and circularity in cities.
Whether it is land-use planning that promotes sustainable urban growth or disaster risk reduction, water and waste management or policy to promote a large-scale move away from fossil fuel-based energy, city municipalities play a key role in preparing cities for the future, and the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has become the first municipality in the country to launch a climate budget to ensure funds allocation for projects and schemes for a climate-resilient city.
Speaking at a panel discussion titled The City And Circularity that was part of the Changemakers Conclave hosted by the Free Press Journal’s Sustainability Network, officer on special duty with the BMC’s environment department Sunil Sardar said Mumbai is the only Indian city to have a climate action plan as well as a green budget, after being the first to have an air pollution prevention cell in the 1970s.
“The municipal budget of Mumbai is Rs 60,000 crore… Of this, 32% is the city’s first green budget,” Sardar said, adding that all departments in the BMC will now also have a green lens for various projects. It will spread awareness about sustainability and climate change not only to BMC’s employees but also the contractors and their workers.”
Dr Sunita Purushottam, sustainability lead at Mahindra Lifespaces, spoke on the opportunity presented by the challenge of building net-zero homes. “It is a huge challenge for a high-rise building to turn net zero,” she said, “but we launched India’s first high-rise net zero energy building in 2022 in Bangalore and in 2023, we launched a project in Mumbai that is a net-zero energy and net zero waste project.”
At a more fundamental level, she said, Indians need to look deeper into questions of how housing demand skyrockets in certain urban pockets account of, for example, an infotech industry boom; and whether projects such arterial highways connecting hinterland zones can be designed to prevent migration into the big cities.
On the housing industry’s emissions, she said at Mahindra Lifespaces they measure the Energy Performance Index (EPI), a crucial metric used to measure energy efficiency, and carefully design and choose building material to achieve the best results. Growing cities appear to be increasingly crowded with glass-and-concrete buildings, even in cities such as Jaipur which can be very hot and very cold. Such buildings then require year-round cooling or heating, growing energy demand exponentially, she said.
Sireesha Chandana, vice president of learning, development and sustainability at Indian Hotels Company Ltd, highlighted efforts undertaken by the Taj Group of hotels to make hotel buildings and the hospitality industry more sustainable. Besides tying up with technology service providers to reduce energy demand and improve energy efficiency wherever possible in older hotel buildings, they also partnered with the World Bank Group’s IFC Techemerge to invite innovators form across the world to use six of their hotels as test beds for new technologies. “We ran an 18-month pilot with nine innovators, and we gave them the opportunity to refine their technology,” Chandana said.
The most successful of these led to a 30% reduction in energy demand in one of the hotels through an automation process.
Also on the panel was Mehul Painter, deputy chief engineer of the BMC, who spoke about reservations and regulations under the new Mumbai Development Plan-2034. “While constructing on a new piece of land, we have made it mandatory for the developer to have an open space as well as rain water harvesting facility. If the plot is bigger than 20,000 sq ft, the developer also needs to get an environmental clearance,” he said.
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