Kalam opens 'Green Business Center'

Thursday, 15 July 2004, 19:30 IST
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HYDERABAD: President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Wednesday inaugurated a business centre here that has been described as the world's most environment-friendly building. The Green Business Centre, a joint venture of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Pirojsha Godrej Foundation, the Andhra Pradesh government and USAID, was built on five acres of land near Hitec City on the city's outskirts at a cost of 100 million. The only platinum rated building in India, the business centre has the world's highest rating of "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEEDS)" awarded by the United States Green Business Centre. Speaking on the occasion, Kalam hoped the Green Business Centre would be the nucleus for creating renewable energy, a benign environment and monitoring and progressively mitigating the effects of climatic change. "The typical features, which you have cited for green buildings, are noteworthy goals towards greater energy efficiency and use of renewable energy, efficient water management and above all caring for the environment," he said. Kalam emphasised the need to use solar cookers developed with Swiss technology in big apartments, hotels and industrial complexes to substantially reduce energy usage and to minimise pollution created by other energy sources. He also cited the example of the building's efficient lighting system based on nanocrystals. He pointed out that with recent advances in semi-conductor based lighting chips, light emitting diodes (LEDs) could provide six hours of reliable light to every home or shop in a village at virtually no recurring energy cost and minimum installation cost. Quoting an expert, Kalam said for a normal building, the energy consumption is 300 KWH per square metre annually. It was important for India to achieve a target of 100 KWH per square metre annually in the next five years. "This will need coordinated effort between architects, builders and energy engineers," he noted. Earlier, Kalam launched a bio-suite package developed by a consortium of Tata Consultancy Service, academic and research and development institutions under the leadership of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) as part of the New Millennium Indian Technology Leadership Initiative. He noted the bio-suite was a state-of-the-art software package that caters to all aspects of computational biology from genomics to structure-based drug design. Kalam suggested "our endeavour should be to use it for our economic development and also position it in the international market". He said the launch of this product would put India on the global map in the knowledge area, encompassing computational biology and post-genomic drug discovery. The sale of the bio-suite at competitive prices will enable Indian students to be trained in bio-informatics and the Indian biotechnology industry to develop newer products at a fraction of the cost of imported software.
Source: IANS