It’s time for the city’s developers to go green. With the Center’s green rating project scheduled to be launched on August 6, environment watchdogs have decided to encourage commercial buildings that will meet energy saving norms.
If developers want to know whether their buildings are meeting the green norms, they can get the energy efficiency levels evaluated by Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI) under the project. Those who pass the test will get a green energy certificate from TERI. In fact, West Bengal Green Energy Development Corporation (WBGEDC) wants the evaluation to be made mandatory for all commercial and IT buildings.
The green rating project will be launched by WBGEDC in the presence of TERI’s director R K Pachauri, who also heads the Nobel Prize winning Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change. He will also discuss environmental issues with chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
WBGEDC managing director S P Ganchowdhuri said the concept of this green rating project is to make both developers and the public aware of the amount of green energy being used to curb consumption of conventional energy.
“The project will cover all upcoming and future commercial buildings in the state. Developers will have to apply to TERI for evaluation of the energy efficiency level of their buildings. The green certificate will come once TERI finds them taking necessary steps to save energy in their buildings. This evaluation will help developers know what they need to do to construct a green energy building and how to minimize the use of conventional energy,” he said.
The director said they want this certification scheme to be made compulsory for all commercial buildings in the city.
“With many commercial and IT buildings coming up at Rajarhat and Salt Lake, we want the green rating to be made mandatory. We will place this proposal before the state government,” he said.
The government has been emphasizing on environmental issues such as air pollution and climate change due to global warming for some time. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee recently declared at a World Environment Day programme that he had invited Pachauri to visit the city and suggest ways to control pollution and save the environment.
Bhattacharjee had said he wanted state agencies like the environment department, disaster management authority and science and technology department to work together and formulate a strategy. The state’s Expert Appraisal Committee has already made rainwater harvesting mandatory for all new multi-storied real estate projects to prevent an imbalance in the groundwater level.
Ahmedabad Attracting NRI
When a London-based real estate marketing firm recently held India property road shows in the US and UK, they were zapped to find Ahmedabad rubbing shoulders with Goa and Mumbai when it came to attracting the highest number of non-resident Indian (NRI) queries.
At a time when the appetite for Indian realty is growing in the US and UK with NRIs now accounting for nearly 15-30 % sales as against 5-15 % three years ago, Ahmedabad is emerging as a hot spot, says Rajeev Goenka, chairman and CEO, Axiom Estates, which focuses only on marketing Indian realty to NRIs and has been conducting such shows for the past five years.
“Of the nearly 300 property developments from 20 Indian cities being showcased, just half a dozen Ahmedabad properties were on offer. Yet, they observed the maximum response,” explains Goenka, who is all charged up about opening a full-fledged Ahmedabad office to cater to the soaring NRI demand.
That’s possibly why nearly 80 city realtors are headed to the US next month as part of Gujarat Institute of Housing and Estate Developers (GIHED)’s first international property shows in New Jersey and Chicago. “After the US sub-prime crisis NRIs have become more bullish on India, where they see better future appreciation. And with realty still going cheap in Ahmedabad, it is now catching their fancy,” says GIHED vice-president Suresh Patel, explaining that mainly high-end properties like bungalows , luxury apartments and golfing realty would be pitched to NRIs.
Meanwhile Rajni Ajmera, president, Credai feels that NRIs are also sold on Ahmedabad because of the good quality of life and superior infrastructure it provides in terms of roads, power, healthcare and retail.
Essar Arm Wins Nagpur Hotel Project
Essar Realty Holdings—the real estate arm of the Essar Group—has won the bid for building a Rs 500-crore five-star hotel, utility centre and a multiplex at the upcoming Multimodal International Hub Airport in Nagpur.
The realty firm has also formed a joint venture with the US-based hospitality group Accor Hospitality to develop and manage the hotel project.
A few months back, the Maharashtra Airport Development Company (MADC), the nodal agency for developing the air cargo hub in Nagpur, had invited bids for the hotel cum conventional hall project. Essar Realty bid for the project through its subsidiary company Yojna Realties. G L Raheja group promoted Raheja Constructions was the immediate bidder for the project.
Essar Realty’s managing director Chirag Ramakrishna said “The MADC deal would reinforce our long-term commitment to the realty business as we continue to look at more opportunities in the realty sector.”
The five-star hotel would be developed in a 10-acre area adjacent to the National Highway VII on the Nagpur-Wardha road. The hotel would have a capacity to house 1,000 people. It would also have a service apartment to cater to the needs of executives who stay on for long tenures. MADC’s project is the second largest property deal struck by Essar Realty during the past six months. Earlier, the firm had acquired Peninsula Land’s (PLL) Kurla commercial project for close to Rs 1,200 crore.
Peninsula Land sold approximately 9 lakh square feet of commercial space to Essar Realty Holdings at its upcoming Peninsula Tech Park project. The proposed Nagpur airport project with an investment of Rs 3,000 crore is to be completed in four years, adding a new dimension to India’s capability of handling air cargo.
India’s air cargo traffic has inched up from 7.97 lakh tonnes in 1999-2000 to 8.4 lakh tonnes in 2001-02 and over 10.6 lakh tonnes now. MADC has already signed an MoU with Deccan Cargo for running the cargo hub at the international airport in Nagpur.