The Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-2012) in India recognised urban development as the key indicator of growth. However with the planet warming up and increased air-pollution, due to ‘petrol and diesel’ based transportation and industrial process, new paradigms of urban development are essential. Besides this, buildings constitute over 40 per cent of the energy consumed and need to reduce their electricity consumption, without adversely impacting quality of life. How can Chennai transform its energy consumption patterns and make them more efficient?
Energy efficiency of buildings
Chennai has often experienced an energy shortage. There are several reasons — the growing population and its electricity requirements, the heat and humidity, the excessive use of air-conditioners, and most importantly, the need to design buildings that bring in natural light. It is ironical that despite robust sunlight in Chennai, most offices and homes consume electricity, using artificial lights during the day, with windows shut to keep out noise and dust. Initiatives to improve the quality of public spaces will enable a better inside-outside relationship. A pleasant urban environment will allow buildings to open out to draw natural light. In growing cities, this is a challenging task, yet possible in gradual stages. A mere technological solution will only result in more inefficiency and increase electricity consumption.
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Energy patterns in medieval Indian cities like Madurai or Jaipur (16th Century) share several common principles with the German Energie-wende (Energy Transition), though for very different reasons. In the absence of electricity in the 15th Century, towns like Madurai had to depend on natural light and ventilation for comfort. The houses had elements like the thinnai (verandah) and inner courtyard. These not only brought in natural light and ventilation but also served as lively social spaces. In another part of the globe, the German government has ushered a new programme to ensure energy efficiency, by reducing their air-conditioning loads and electricity consumption. The technologically driven buildings and malls in India, with centralised ACs could well draw lessons in energy efficiency from the German Energie-wende programme. Good passive design, where buildings respond to the local climate, can drastically reduce electricity consumption. For instance, bringing in north light, cutting off the heat from the west with smaller windows, deep overhangs on the south side, and creating a cool external micro-climate with trees.
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How can Chennai reduce its garbage and waste? Can Chennai deploy its organic vegetable waste to produce electricity and bio-gas? Recycling organic waste and bio-mass has a tremendous potential. This would imply that architects and builders have to re-engineer their projects to ensure that organic waste from the kitchens can be segregated and used to produce bio-gas for cooking. Simultaneously, Chennai’s municipal waste system could draw guidelines from Germany’s recycling processes. What is considered garbage and waste would assume a new significance to generate power and bio-gas for the city. Bio-mass is also a predictable source of energy and electricity, in winters and monsoons, when no solar energy is available. Germany is gradually increasing its share of bio-gas generated from organic waste. Sociologically, the significant aspect of this transition is it would generate livelihood opportunities. It could de-centralise power generation and ensure that neighbourhoods are self-reliant. Potentially by 2040, each neighbourhood could produce its own electricity and initiate urban agriculture with its recycled water. Today a humungous quantity of water is consumed by cities and then let off into urban rivers and the sea. Only a sustained programme, that is easy to comprehend, affordable and reliable can usher a transition to making our cities more equitable, pollution-free and energy efficient. Transforming the energy consumption pattern is essential for Chennai to pioneer a sustainable urban process and to re-evaluate its direction of growth.
The writer is an environmental architect and social activist