India - Building model campus communities

Engineering school campuses are ideally placed to develop into fertile breeding grounds for climate innovation.
Technology institutions in India have the capacity to become bellwether centres for near-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Such a transformation could generate technological and social innovations that reduce GHG emissions; produce the next generation of engineers and entrepreneurs trained to think creatively about alternative energy sources; lead to the building of model campus communities that demonstrate how to change buildings, improve urban planning, and alter personal behaviour to achieve near-zero GHG emissions; and signal India’s commitment to reduce GHGs while making it a leader in innovations that would catalyse such change.Innovation and climate emissions
Social and technological innovations can have a transformative effect on the lives of people. Microfinance has pulled families out of poverty in Bangladesh and in other parts of the world. The Jaipur leg has given thousands the ability to walk again and innovations in health and energy are dramatically changing the future for many people. However, there remains a pressing need to unleash the potential of innovations that will reduce GHG emissions and also allow us to adapt to climate change. Some level of global warming is expected to take place even if emissions were to be reduced drastically and much depends on our ability to limit warming trends to within 2{+0}C above pre-industrial levels, which requires stringent mitigation measures.
Where do most of the GHG emissions in India come from? According to the National Communications Report to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the energy sector is responsible for 61 per cent of GHGs followed by agriculture at 28 per cent and industrial processes at 8 per cent. Waste is responsible for 2 per cent and land use change and forestry for 1 per cent. Transportation, commercial-institutional and residential buildings form a significant portion of the GHGs from the energy sector.
Although per capita GHG emissions in India are 1.9 tonnes in carbon dioxide equivalent terms as opposed to 24.3 in the U.S. and 10.5 in Europe, these vary dramatically across income groups. Other than the poor, whose energy consumption is very low, all groups in India have significantly higher carbon emissions.
In fact, according to a recent Greenpeace report, some 150 million Indians at the top of the economic ladder live luxuriously enough to produce 4.5 times more carbon emissions than what the 800 million poor do. A family of four that owns a vehicle, has a flat or house and whose joint income is more than Rs. 50,000 a month is likely to emit as much as the average Western European family. According to most estimates, the ‘safe level’ of average global per capita emissions is about 2 tonnes by 2050. This means although India’s average is below this target, the middle class emits much more and needs to reduce its emissions dramatically in order to make room for the rest of the population as it emerges out of poverty, which will undoubtedly increase their greenhouse gas ‘footprint.’
Addressing climate change requires a range of locally relevant innovations. The challenges that various regions and communities face would vary based on the local climate, geography, energy demand, economy and other factors. The right responses are therefore most likely to be different from one place to another. For example, even among the IITs, the campus and climate in Guwahati are quite different from that in Chennai or Delhi. Other universities have been “going green” for a long time. For example, Green Mountain College in Vermont has designated 50 per cent of its main campus electric usage as cow power (from biogas), because of the large number of dairy farms in the area, and 100 per cent on all its other accounts. Tufts University installed technology that would turn off vending machines when no one was around, thus saving up to 50 per cent of the energy compared with regular machines. Further, to reduce emissions from transportation, the university partnered with Zipcar to implement a car-sharing programme on campus using hybrid and electric cars. A search for “campus greening initiative” on the Internet yields the range of methods adopted by various universities based on local challenges and opportunities. In addition to simply “going green,” what engineering schools in India can offer is the bonus of generating innovations and innovators. Such local Climate Innovation Centres are exactly what India needs to address the growing and mammoth dual challenge of climate mitigation and adaptation.Why engineering campuses?
Campuses have the capacity to build successful climate innovation systems: all the organisations and individuals involved in generating, diffusing, adapting and using new knowledge; the interactive learning that must occur when organisations engage in generation, diffusion, adaptation and new use of knowledge, (that is, new products and processes); and the institutions — rules, habits and conventions — that govern how these interactions and processes occur. Engineering school campuses, with their unique education, talent and skills, separate enclaves, and relatively independent management, are ideally placed to develop into fertile breeding grounds for climate innovation and serve as models for the rest of the community. IITs and other engineering colleges also have access to government and private funds to provide investments required for a metamorphosis of this kind. Engineering campuses have residential, administrative, commercial and institutional buildings, some of which have laboratories with demand for high and low temperatures and instruments and tools for experiments. Some of the numerous strategies that could be used to reduce the carbon footprint of such campuses are changing the building design to minimise cooling and heating losses, using cogeneration, solar thermal, wind and photovoltaic, for energy, improving energy efficiency of pumps, motors, fans, freezers and fume hoods, improving efficiency of water use and having extensive natural daylighting to reduce energy demand. Others involve improved design and planning of transportation on and to and from campuses.
Improvements in Internet and communications could ensure that face-to-face meetings are held with the ease of a switch, eliminating or reducing the need for travel. Campuses could also create a personal carbon allowance system that would take each individual’s carbon usage into consideration and provide a mechanism for students, faculty, staff and residents to live within tightened carbon budgets.
The climate crisis of the 21st century makes it imperative that every part of the world develop a road map as quickly as possible to strive towards near-zero GHG emissions. Campuses could become living laboratories in which engineering students design projects as part of their course or degree requirements, where they experiment and have pilot applications on technologies and policies that accomplish significant GHG reductions; and where partnerships with urban planners and other experts help to fuel the social changes that would also be required.
Such climate innovation centres would give rise to a generation of young minds nurtured in a place that promotes innovation on the most challenging environmental problem of our times. The only obstacles we might face are mental inertia, lack of political will and the absence of imagination, but the reality of climate change impacts should help to sweep away such impediments.