Real estate sector to adopt solar energy

Manu Karan, Vice President, CleanMax Solar speaking with Leandra Monteiro focused insights on how commercial buildings are adopting solar energy and abating up to 30% of its annual greenhouse gas emissions

  Drivers for the real estate sector to adopt solar energy Real estate sector is commonly admitted to be a high-carbon asset class. This makes it to have one of the crucial reasons to move towards a more sustainable business practice. Commercial buildings consume around 40% of the energy and abate up to 30% of its annual greenhouse gas emissions. Also, commercial power tariffs are increasing year on year and have consequently raised operating expenses for organisations. As a solution, renewable energy, which is approximately 30 per cent cheaper than prevailing grid electricity  tariffs, is a compelling offer. Furthermore, corporates today have sustainability targets and are actively working to decrease their carbon footprints Sustainability trends in India and globally that are followed  Climate change has reached a point today, where we can no longer afford to ignore it, and companies across sectors and the world are taking active steps to reduce their carbon footprint. Green buildings are fast becoming the norm, and today we are witnessing developers adopt environmentally friendly elements across their projects. One way in which this is being done, is by creating spaces for green buildings to self-generate electricity, and recover their costs in the long run. Developers are also considering designing their rooftops in a way that makes it feasible to install a rooftop solar plant. Additionally, they can also consider converting car parking areas into solar carports, to make optimum use of the available land without disturbing natural habitats. As a result of these design provisions, buildings can enjoy savings on their energy bills, and in fact, it has also been reported that green buildings earn a 7 per cent increase in asset value, as compared to their conventional counterparts. How can CleanMax Solar help the real estate sector to reduce dependence on the grid without any investment? Solar power has become increasingly affordable and accessible, with a number of private customers opting for the OPEX model, to install rooftop solar power plants, and meet their sustainability goals.  For the mass adoption of rooftop solar in the real estate sector, they have to begin at the design stage itself, where roofs are designed to ensure rooftop power plants are easily installed. Rooftop solar installations have seen significant energy cost savings, besides abatement of carbon dioxide for our client, Viviana Mall, in Mumbai. Here we have installed rooftop solar plant with a total capacity of 1.58 MW across 5 roofs. The mall now enjoys an annual reduction of INR 10.5 million in energy bills and abates 1904 tons of carbon dioxide per annum. Additionally, there is also a need to increase LEED certification points for green buildings with renewable energy installations, to encourage more developers to adopt the technology. Top clients of CleanMax Solar CleanMax Solar caters to various commercial, industrial, warehousing, data centre buildings, etc in the real estate sector pertaining to  segments like Automobiles, Healthcare, Educational Institutions, IT/ITES, Cement companies, Beverage corporations amongst many others. Adobe, and Mindtree office buildings in Bengaluru including Kempegowda International Airport source their power requirements from our solar farms in Karnataka. Some of our education clients include Pune University, NIT - Surathkal, IISER Bhopal, XLRI Jamshedpur, Amity University Manipal University, among others. With the advent into the UAE, we have clients like the renowned building materials company Danube Group in Dubai.