Daily Times

“We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us.” – Winston Churchill

The government has recently launched its Naya Pakistan Housing Scheme envisaging construction of 5 million houses for low-income people over its 5-year term. It is believed that the scheme will support more than 40 upstream industries to support the construction endeavour. One overlooked aspect, however, is the tremendous impact the scheme will have on public utility systems and on the environment.

The purpose here is not to raise alarm but only to draw decision-makers’ attention towards consequences of their actions and to offer some suggestions on how harmful impacts can be minimized through careful planning and design of these houses.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation using a set of reasonable assumptions (2.5 kW load per house, 50 per cent coincidence factor, 30 per cent load factor, 20 per cent reserve margin, 15 per cent transmission and dispatch losses, $1,000 per kW cost for installing new generation capacity, 40 per cent plant efficiency, $75 per barrel oil price) indicates the scheme will impose a 7,500 MW new power demand on the national grid, requiring around $7.5 billion investment upfront to build new generation and transmission and dispatch capacity to adequately serve this demand.

The energy demand of the Naya Pakistan Housing consumers alone – in excess of 19,000 GWh – will entail import of around 28 million barrels of oil costing the nation about $2 billion annually. Generation of this quantum of energy will release over 12 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in the air – the contributor to global climate change – in addition to other noxious pollutants, thus further burdening the country’s fragile environment.

The above figures are derived using the traditional approach to energy planning – expansion of supply capacity to meet new demand. Depending on the assumptions, the estimates above could vary by a few per cent, but the basic point should be clear. Left to itself, the scheme will add a serious burden on an already constrained power system and environment of the country and would exacerbate the problems.

The government should consider it a good opportunity to catalyse the development of much-needed industrial capacity and technical know-how for sustainable building materials and solar systems. This will help these industries take root in the country

The government, therefore, must take notice of this serious potential implications and act swiftly to explore alternative ways and means to minimize the extra stress on the power system and also its attendant adverse environmental impacts. One such alternative is to use “energy-conscious building designs and construction” techniques.

In our homes and elsewhere, we do not consume energy or electricity directly. We use it only to meet certain service needs such as lighting, space conditioning, ventilation, water heating, and cooking. The consumers are indifferent to the energy source as long as their service demands are reliably and affordably met. The wiser approach would be to eliminate or minimize these needs at the source, that is, at the house itself.

Energy-conscious building design and construction has evolved as a viable option over the past few decades to make the buildings fit into their background environment and climates in such a way that the energy demands of the inhabitants are minimized in the first step. Next, natural means are used to serve the remaining needs to avoid costly infrastructure upstream.

Through a careful study of the local climate, and by using intelligent siting, landscaping, spacing, vegetation, orientation, design, building features, and construction materials, adverse climatic impacts on these buildings can be minimized whereas the positive features such as day lighting, ventilation, sun’s heat and energy can be exploited to the benefit of the inhabitants.

This is not a new concept. Our ancestors had been using these techniques for ages until the availability of cheap energy, especially oil and gas and the electricity produced from their combustion encouraged building designers and owners to ignore such considerations and design buildings independently of the energy and environmental impacts.

These concepts have seen a revival since the early 1980s in the wake of rising energy prices and now have become an established and highly desirable practice in advanced countries. It has been found to eliminate building energy requirements by as much as 30 to 50 per cent.

Whatever demand is left, the government can consider meeting it at each house by helping homeowners install rooftop solar water heating and photovoltaic systems. This way, the government can serve 75 to 80 per cent of the prospective electricity demand of the Naya Pakistan Housing consumers at source and thus would avoid imposing a serious burden on the already constrained power system and environment of the country.

The biggest benefit of this alternative will, however, come in the form of the 12,500 MW (assuming a 2.5 kW PV system is installed per house and 5 million houses) of renewable power generation capacity it will make available to the national grid, distributed over the entire country. Based on sunny skies most of the year, a strong case can be made for the PV capacity to help displace considerable generating capacity in the grid, but for now let’s ignore it and focus only on the energy it can contribute.

Given that the residential electricity demand is minimum during the day and assuming that each house can feed 50 per cent of its electricity production to the local distribution system (the other half going to serve that residence’s own demand and to charge its battery storage), it can contribute over 10,000 GWh of renewable electricity to the grid yearly which can be used to avoid its production using conventional fuels, thus saving the nation 16 million barrels of oil imports worth $1.25 billion every year, also helping the nation avoid 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.

To realize this potential, the government will need to lead the effort from the front. It should form a consortium from among the NPH Authority, Power Division, Ministry of Housing, NEPRA, PEPCO, Ministry of Climate Change, and a leading academic programme in architecture and civil engineering in the country and giving them a clear mandate and concrete targets for realizing the potential.

A financial scheme will have to be devised, by creating a suitable fund, to aid the homeowners get easy-term loans to share their PV installation costs, which can be recovered through their monthly contributions to the national grid. Often, a small investment made upfront to obviate a huge cost down the road is wiser.

In fact, the government should consider it a good opportunity to catalyse the development of the much-needed local industrial capacity and technical know-how for sustainable building materials and solar systems. This will help these industries take root in this country, will generate new jobs, and will go a long way in promoting sustainable energy and environmental practices in the country.

The risks and costs of not taking a timely and effective action will be serious because once completed, the 5 million houses will lock the nation into dependence on non-renewable energy consumption patterns for the next 50 to 70 years and will put a serious strain on our already constrained power system and the environment. Let’s shape our buildings in such a way that they can promote sustainability.

The writer is a freelance consultant specializing in sustainable energy system planning and development