Nürtingen

It was among the very first things that caught my attention as I looked up for more info on Nurtingen, prior to my visit to this lovely place as part of a journalist exchange programme in April. I was intrigued by the concept of Green Roofs (GR).

A concept which had its origins in Germany and Switzerland and one which also chaacterised Nurtingen. Much as I could gauge from the name that it was certainly a technology to do with a greener and cleaner environment and as a way of tackling climate change, I had to read on and talk to experts to know how this could be the best answer for many a building in my country India. The answer lay with the International Green Roof Association (IGRA).

For the first-time ever, IGRA will be participating in Roof India 2012, an exhibition to be held at the Chennai Trade Centre, Chennai, India from May 25 till 27, 2012. The exhibition will be a meeting place for roofing systems, architectural cladding, facade engineering, pre-engineered buildings, metal building systems, spaceframes, tensile fabric architecture, roof waterproofing, roof insulation, roofing fasteners etc. With Stuttgart being the GR capital of the world, it was but natural for me to try and learn a little more about a technology that could be the answer for dealing with lots of environmental problems around the globe.

According to a recent report, India is facing an energy security challenge. Speaking in Kolkata, India recently, renowned environmentalist R.K. Pachauri, director general of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), said that demand for energy in India is dangerously high. Applying green technologies in construction of buildings could reduce operational charges by up to 30-40 per cent, he said. Pachauri also heads the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC is a scientific intergovernmental body first established in 1988 by two UN organizations, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nationas Environment Programme (UNEP), and later endorsed by the UN General Assembly.

Given this background and the affirmation by IGRA to be in India, seemed but a positive way to bring about a new technology that could benefit Indian cities which have green buildings and are now at an advantage of putting to good use the GR technology.

Urging better utilisation of the technology, Wolfgang Ansel, director, IGRA, said: "Big cities around the world have more or less the same environment and similar problems. India is a huge market with a lot of potential. Countries like Japan, China or Singapore have been practising green roof technology for decades and it is time for India to buck up on this." Though the concept is quite popular in North America, South America, Europe and parts of Asia, there has to be a proper approach for this to work in cities such as Kolkata in India. "Germany has a long tradition of GRs. It all started in the 1970s and '80s. The major reason was because of ecological composition for environmental concerns. The question was how to build technology that could be applied for buildings and also for those which do not have very high load bearing capacity. It was also how to bring forth a cheap technology and a way in which the governments or municipalities could make regulations for the application of green roofs."

In Germany, the technology is known as extensive green roof technology. However, for the English speaking architects and planners in India this could be a little misleading, for 'extensive' in English means large, while that in Germany means low maintenance. "Those with a small roof, a garage or a little space with little amount of irrigation can work with GR technology. All one needs are these and a few specialised plants in the beginning which can survive in extreme conditions like too much water or even drought. The 'miracle' plants grow very fast after seeding and growing and they grow between 5 cm and 15 cms." added Ansel.

But the most important aspect to be kept in mind is roof protection so that plants cannot destroy the water proofing which can lead to leakage problems and thereby defeat the purpose of GRs. "What actually works well for the technology is that it imitates nature through a natural mode and a technical mode. What is largely recommended is a multi-layer system which does not involve revival or change and the life period is very long (often as much as 30 or 40 years)."

But like all good things, green roofs too come with a price. Some may feel that anything between euro 25 to 50 is expensive but not before it is to be remembered that this would be a one-time investment. "A complete value for price," as Ansel describds it. The benefits of the technology include storing of water in the soil, thereby dealing with the major problem of flooding, keeping water in the middle of the sea for cooling effects, encouraging bio diversity which involves lots of insects and plants etc.

Despite all the pluses that green roof technology comes with, it is but a challenge to see how it may work in cities which have old buildings. The important issue would be to keep in mind the load-bearing capacity and to see how well the old buildings are equipped. An exmaple at hand is The Netherlands which pioneered the concept of green roofs in old buildings. Also the corporations and municipalities can do well by offering discounts and incentives for those houses which involve green roof technology. "In India, the functions of the GR technology will be the same but we have to look at local components for the substrates and plants," added Ansel.

While climate change may assume disastraous proportions in the coming 20 years, it is every citizen's responsibility to see the kind of buildings that we build can save the future of Mother Earth. It is time, the humans took responsibility for the climate, the water, the animals and insects as well as the soil and landscape.

While companies such as ZinCo GmbH in Nurtingen have themselves been examples of sorts, it is for all to create a network that would be a platform for information sharing. The new building which houses ZinCo and its 100 + employees is a case study by itself on how to produce more energy than to consume. Pioneers of the GR technology, it builds GR without damaging the water proofing. "The new office has a huge underground garage and vertical green area. It is a low energy building where heating is done through the computers and stored centrally. With projects in many countries such as Teheran, Algeria, Malaysia, Australia, the USA and Canada among others, it is ZinCo's way of propagating something human, something that would help everybody live a longer life in a cleaner environment," said Roland Appl, technical director at ZinCo.

As the world gears up for the next big conference on green roofs in Hamburg in May 2013, it remains an imperative for everyone living in the globe to be working with the climate and not against it.