When Surat Builders Association (SBA) organized a property show in March, nearly 25 developers promised to come up with 51 green buildings, all residential, in the city.
Nearly 30 buildings are under construction, but the developers are finding it difficult to sell them as buyers are not willing to pay additional cost incurred due to specific green building provisions. As result, the construction of green buildings has slowed down in the city.
Velji Sheta, president of Surat Builders Association, said, ” We incur 12 to 15 per cent more expenses in green buildings. People are reluctant to buy in such schemes but now the awareness is gradually increasing.”
Green buildings concept assumes significance considering that Surat has city has just 8.4 per cent green cover, lowest among the big cities of western India.
“There is an additional cost factor involved in these projects and at times buyers are not willing to part with this hiked charges,” said Tarun Rawal, who is planning green residential schemes in Parvat Patia and Vesu. “Yes, we know we need to develop green buildings and townships for the future of the sustainable city. But first we need to educate people about such buildings, its benefits and advantages in the long run,” added Rawal, who is the former president of SBA.
If the houses have a green roof, temperatures can be brought down by at least three degrees Celsius. This was the view expressed by the experts of Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) in a seminar on - Green and Sustainable City Development organized by South Gujarat Chamber and Commerce and Industry on Saturday.
The concept of green building is fairly new for our country and in 2010 India had just one green building but it has taken off well and today we have 1700 such buildings. Surat too has a known building at Hajira in form of L&T building in the complex.
Large number of diamond houses has come up with the new designs of their factory units which fit in the green building concepts of the city.
“Keeping environment in mind we designed our new factory building in such a way that it has direct rays of sunlight, green cover and minimum use of air conditioners,” said Govind Dholakiya, owner of Shree Ramkrishna Exports.
“Unless we have green building concept in our constructions, it will be very difficult to sustain the high economic growth engine of the city,” said Ankur Sanghavi, an architect from a university in Arizona, US and member of Indian Green building Council (IGBC).
