 It's a special address, ladies and gentlemen, which will be presented by Mili Majumdar, Managing Director, GBCI India Private Limited and Senior Vice President for USGBC. Ladies and gentlemen, an architecture graduate and a building technology specialist, she has more than two decades of experience in the field of energy and environment. Could we have a huge round of applause, ladies and gentlemen, for Miss Mili Majumdar. Yes ma'am, I request you to come forward for the special address, please. Good evening. Sorry, I will not bore you, you know, with a bunch of slides. So I just want to make it a bit more interactive and when I, you know, spoke a few minutes back, I said that I didn't hear about environment, you know, in the whole discussion. To a quick question, you know, I just need to see some hands up. How many developers here go through the environment clearance process? Three hands, I can see. How many of you implemented, honestly, everything? Okay, so same three hands in this whole room. How many of you have implemented any green certification system for the purpose of getting incentives? Only one hand. Two? Not you? Applied, okay. And so can you, so I can see three hands. So can you tell me just one quick thing that if you are implementing environment clearance and maybe two questions, you know, and if you're implementing a green certification, do you find a lot of difference and additional things that you need to do when you go for a green certification? Of course you have to do more, you know, beyond certain limits to be able to get better certification. But do you need to implement technically more things, what you would commit for environment clearance and what you would commit for green certification? Any response? Yes. Right? So it is almost same, right? Yes, absolutely. So my question is, you know, so I'm coming to this question, that we always hear when we are making a green building, you know, it is expensive. Developers have whole lot of problems and issues to solve. Now, if you are committing to a certain regulation and law which demands you to do certain green things, then why would it be expensive? You know, if you are following it to the T, why it will be expensive? I haven't had an answer this far. I would like to hear back from you. And the final thing is that you are providing certain facilities to your consumers. So you have an obligation towards them. So when you are making a green building, when you are making, you know, environment friendly and environment clearance compliant building, you also need to ensure that they are getting the benefit of what you have invested in. So but this, there is, I think, a severe disconnect between the three. Again, if I ask you the same question, that have you gone back to the societies where you have provided maybe an STP or you have provided solar bank, you know, of water heating panels or you have provided, you know, flushing water provision through dual plumbing. Are they working? Are they functioning? Have the RWAs been able to maintain it? Are they getting benefit? You know, from my personal experience in this, we can have a Q and A later if you have time. I have found that there is a lot of gap between when we design green, environment friendly, when we construct, you know, how much of the design is translating into practice. And then finally, when the consumers are ending up paying for this, how is he really getting the benefit? So how do you kind of, you know, bridge this gap is something very important. I think unnecessarily we have mystified the issue of green by saying it is expensive. It is something utopian. We can't do it within the budgets. It is, if it is done properly, it is not so. So I, just a few, you know, so I will not. So, you know, my organization just introduced myself that I represent the US Green Building Council. We are known for LEED certification and we do green certification in about 165 countries. And GBCI is affiliated to USGBC and we do the certification and credentialing while USGBC sets the mother, you know, the standard setting body that has developed the LEED rating. And in addition to LEED, we have now since the environmental issues are large, so we have a large portfolio of rating system that looks at health, wellness, smart grades and several other things. But, you know, since I have a limited time, so I'll just focus on the issue that I spoke about. How do we bridge this gap between what we are committing as an environment-friendly building and what the consumer is getting? Is there an easy way to do that? So we have a solution for that, so I'll just come to that. So, you know, just quickly when we design, so it is the responsibility, you know, like we design the skin of the building, systems, etc. to make it more efficient that the contractor comes. And I have seen, you know, to cut costs, they will first cut out the insulation, they'll provide substandard glass, so there is a dilution of the standard. So there is a gap between what you're designing and what you're actually implementing. Now finally, how do you know it is green? Do you really measure it? What are your parameters that you are trying to, you know, assess your green performance through? So that is very, very important. And there are very simple measures to do it, you know. When you say energy, it is simply the amount of energy that you're using, the electricity bills that you are getting. And increasingly nowadays, you have also focused on the indoor environmental quality. The outdoor pollution level is so high that IEQ is a very, very important parameter. And these two are unfortunately indirectly connected, which means that if you have to have an improved indoor air quality, you have to spend more on energy. The technology demands that. So you have to somehow find a balance for a greener environment. So how to do that? And so who is responsible? You know, we have the tendency to pass the buck, but it's now time for us to own up and be responsible for our actions. And each person is responsible. The developer is equally responsible as the contractor and the consumer is also equally responsible to maintain the green performance which the developer has promised. I'll give you some examples, you know, in my personal journey that I have had through this several years in the profession. For example, simple things. When you design for water, you know, you will be providing, say, landscape that uses less water. You will be providing water-efficient fixtures. You will be providing ETPs, STP, rainwater harvesting. And you will be providing dual plumbing system for using flushing water. But did you go back and check that is there what happens when there is an inadequate pressure of supply? The first thing what the consumer will do is to disconnect, you know, or maybe change the pressure reducing valve and have more water consumption. What happens when there is no supply of water? What is the quality of treated water? So unless you are able to plug this, green will never work. So it's very crucial to, you know, see the performance of all this. So this is the obvious question. Do I really consume less water? Do I really consume less, you know, water that is of good quality? And am I really green? Similar, you know, comes to the energy. So there is a very detailed process that the designer, you know, adopts. And this is something, again, you know, the consultants adopt to come to an optimized energy performance in a building. But finally, as I said, it boils down to two performance parameters. The electricity bill that you get at the end of the month and the kind of, you know, quality of air that you are having inside. So that is the connect that you need to make. And I'm urging that the developer should put a play, you know, system in place to be able to monitor this so that you are ensured that whatever you have provided is actually performing. Now, simply, you know, energy is a little bit complicated thing. So I just spent two minutes on this. You know, we have the, how many of you are aware of the energy conservation building code? Because if you are following the EIA clearance process, meeting the requirements of the ECBC is a mandate. How many of you are aware of that? So a code gives you standards for your building envelope, you know, that how much thick your wall needs to be, what kind of window you need to give, what kind of roof you need to provide, etc. But my question is that even if you design as per that, and I want to just give you some examples, you know, when I was part of my earlier organization, we monitored several buildings about, you know, little less than 100. And we found that a building that was least code-compliant, it may be performing better than a building that was maybe near to fully code-compliant. But why does that happen? Because, you know, you may have designed a place in a way, but the building operator that comes to operate the building may not be, you know, doing it in the way that you have... I'm giving you again one example, you know, one of the best rated green building in NCR, we went back to check their energy performance. And we found... And that building had a very high-end air conditioning system, you know, with variable frequency drives, etc. And we found that the building operator, in order to convenience himself, or he had some problem with the, you know, the drives, etc., he had disconnected the system from the main, you know, the HVAC system. So what happened at the end? Finally, the building was running at full load, though it was capable of running at, you know, part load and with an efficient system performance, but it was not doing it. And since there was no performance check, so there was nobody to check it. So, you know, it is not always that if you have designed a super efficient building that it will perform. Well, and I have numbers to show that it does not. Then the final thing is, now you have these new standards. I'm not sure if you're aware. The ISHRE has brought out these new standards for indoor air quality, which is very, very crucial for us to make. We know that post-Divalia and all we hear so much issues about, you know, the pollution levels that go up. But, and it is also measured that the indoor air pollution may be several times higher than the outdoor air pollution. You know, because you have concentration of air, so the PM 2.5 level, et cetera, it can go to several hundreds when the limit is up to, you know, 15. So in order to control this, which is the new standard, you have to introduce new technologies because you have to filter the air, you have to introduce more treated fresh air, et cetera, and that will increase your energy performance. So I think, you know, finally the solution which we have now introduced is that, firstly that we have to simplify, you know, we cannot have too complicated system for rating and green rating. So how do you simply measure performance, track it and make improvement strategies? So we have, and technology is an enabler and data is an enabler. So we have introduced this platform, a cloud-based platform of tracking and maintaining your performance and also get a certification under the LEED system. So since I do not have much time, but this is basically a cloud-based and a real-time monitoring system and if you stop performing, you stop getting rated, you know, and it's a dynamic score based on few simple parameters which I said earlier, which is the energy, you know, consumed by the building, the water consumed by the building, the waste treated and diverted from landfill, the indoor air quality that you maintain and transportation of, you know, people who are coming in and out of the building. These basic five parameters you maintain and you put the data and you generate a score and it's a global, local and a regional score. That means your building will get benchmark locally, regionally as well as globally because we are a global organization and there are two ways. One, you can see how green you are without getting rated just by generating the score and the other is you can get certified and maintain the green performance, you know. So I think in current day, this is very, very crucial and a few snapshots, you know, on what these scores look like and how you generate them. But it helps you to benchmark yourself and just to give an example, you know, for example, this was a SLEED certified project in Chennai that had a certain level of performance in 2013 and since it measured it, it was able to upgrade its performance by applying simple strategies of, say, better lighting, better water fixture and it moved from silver to gold level and that's a continuous improvement process and so this is the system of performance score to lead certification and, you know, and there are different steps and I'm happy to explain, you know, you more if you have time and we have DMRC headquarter also that has got recently certified. So thank you very much for your patience and for your hearing and I just want to conclude that, you know, we have to provide a better world and we have to maintain it, so let's, you know, keep performing better and better. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, ma'am. A request, Mr. BG, we also kind of come forward to present the memento to Ms. Majumdar, please. Come at the center of the stage. Okay, so we could take the memento and then we'll take the question answers because there's already come on the stage. We'll take the questions there. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you for being the owners. All right, so we have time for one or two questions at max, ma'am. Is that okay? All right, any questions here? I think we had some of you raising your hands for the questions. Yeah, I'll just come to you. Hi, good evening, ma'am. Yeah, good evening. You know, what I really wanted to say was the presentation that you had was great. The only thing what I feel, and when it comes from, especially when we're talking about an organization which you represent, I think what is required is educating the people. Absolutely. Okay, a lot of us, more than the legal aspects of it, that legal aspects or what is required, what I'm saying is people should understand the bottom lines. Like you said, save the environment. I was born in Gurgaon. The water used to be, the water table was five to six feet. Today it's 70 to 80 meters. Okay, what we've done to Mother Earth is nothing short of draping it. Absolutely. I can go on and on and on. I mean, I was myself involved in the smart city development as part of the New York City development. So I can say, I think it, more than anything else, that is the vision of passing this message and educating people, what are these consequences if we don't take care of this? Absolutely, sir. I fully agree. And I think as an organization, we are taking enormous amount of steps to educate, not only the professionals, but also young minds and upwards. So that is a kind of an ever-ending agenda. More and more we speak to people, we educate them. So that is a significant part of our mission and vision globally. I appreciate that. I mean, I just... Yes, absolutely. For the overall good. So from young kids to from K-12, you know, kind of... See, it should just come naturally. Yes, absolutely. You know, fully agree. When you have to impose things over, this is the law, you have to do it. There is a lot of gap between the law. That's what I'm saying. There is no dearth of legal laws in the country. It is only about compliance and enforcement and also doing it from your heart that you have to do it for your own self. Right. I mean, it's... I think that's... That is what is required, not pushing people or forcing them to act in a certain way, asking them, you have to do rainwater harvesting or you have to make sure when they make these buildings, the developers, they don't use groundwater or, you know, all the buildings which are made should be covered so there's no dust pollution going on. There's so many different things. You know, if I go on energy conservation, we will have a separate debate. So, I mean, what I really feel is it has to... and I think each one of us who's sitting here is responsible for this. Absolutely. Agreed. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yes, we have one final question. My question is, does U.S. Green Bending Council and U.S. RC, that is Resiliency Council, do you work in tandem? Because, you know, there can be a project where you rate it as five-star and U.S. RC rates it as one-star. You know, conversely, there may be a project where U.S. RC rates it as five-star. What is U.S. RC? Sorry. That is U.S. Resiliency Council. Okay, I'm not familiar with the rating. First time I'm hearing. I'm sorry for my ignorance, you know. Okay, so... Because in India, there is no U.S. RC rating. Yes, U.S. RC does not have an India chapter. Yeah. Like U.S. GBC has an India chapter. Yes, of course. But U.S. RC does not have a... Yes, yes. But basically what U.S. RC does, they also have a five-star rating system. No, we don't have a star rating. We have... You have gold, platinum. Yes, absolutely. Gold and silver. But I can get back to you because what happens is for each rating systems, you have different benchmarks and standards. So it is finally depending on that how you get scores and points. Yes. So U.S. RC actually rates a building on its structural performance. So you rate it on the energy performance. Not only energy, we rate it on... So the parameters are very different. Yes. You know, we do not rate on structural performance at all. Yeah. So what I'm saying is that probably if both organizations align, it will be a more comprehensive rating. Sure, absolutely. We'll take this advice, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, ma'am.