‘Net Zero’ and ‘Net Positive’: Emerging for the goodness of buildings

The biggest concern in both the cases, is generation of water and power, which is insufficient to cater to the continuous increase in demand

Amod Dikshit, President, ASHRAE – Mumbai Chapter in an interaction with Megha Iyer talks about how India is already making sufficient roadways for food transition, so as to benefit the farmers with the output of their produced foods, by delivering them to the desired people.

‘Net Zero’ is fairing in India?
The HVAC industry is an integral part of a ‘Net Zero’ building because HVAC systems consumes almost 50 per cent of the total power and water, in any kind of a construction. Since HVAC is the mass consumer of power and water, the lesser we consume, the better it is for the environment. Coming to the point on how it is affecting the industry, I think that the biggest concern here, in both the cases, is generation of both water and power, which is insufficient to cater to the continuous increase in demand. We are definitely aware of the fact that there is a scarcity of generation of water and power, when it comes to using them for supplementary means. With the help of trigeneration, we are able to generate power, hot/cold water along with usage of waste water from the sewage plants, extracted from water that we consume on a daily basis, by recycling it for further use of the HVAC&R industry.

To be very precise, it works the other way. It’s the HVAC&R industry, which is taking best possible efforts in making the ‘Net Zero’ concept more and more effective, with an additional advancement into the architectural well insulated envelope concept, by merging it with the idea of ‘Net Positive’.

The ‘R’ making cognisant and incessant efforts
Food and beverage is a part of the cold chain industry. Today, India speaks of achieving great heights in the cold chain industry. However, as a matter of fact, India is still in a very primitive state. There are huge concerns in this industry that are left disconcerted. You can find wastage of food because food doesn’t reach the storage and therefore does not reach the table. This is a result of an incomplete process in the cold chain. Every other day there is news that tons of onions are rotting, either because of storage problems, of due to inefficient supply chain. Why only onions, other vegetables like tomatoes among others, and fruits like mangoes, grapes amongst others are decomposed due to inadequate or incomplete cold chain or supply chain and storage facility. Here, in the HVAC&R, ‘R’ of refrigeration is making cognisant and incessant efforts to make the cold chain and the supply chain better every day.

Food chain industry
There are better and efficient technologies coming in, to the industry, because of which the food chain industry is proliferating in leaps and bounds.

The government has already provided huge subsidy and strong support to the food chain industry and we can witness a notable transformation in the preceding pattern as the food now not only reaches to the storages, but also reaches the tables thus completing the supply chain. Another point we need to understand is, that any eatery is a perishable product, and it may perish at any given place, particularly where climatic conditions or supply cold chain is not favourable. It may be at the farmer’s place or in the market, when the product is unsold but not stored properly, during transit where the climatic conditions are not favourable or due to long routes where transit time is 5 days or more to reach the end user. All these factors have taken a huge leap in the shipping industry, an export transit may take weeks and months to reach the desired country. The complete process is one of the primary responsibilities of the HVAC&R industry and hence the government is providing subsidy emphasising on the safe reach.

ASHRAE and ISHRAE: Coming together
ASHRAE is a society of heating, refrigerating, air-conditioning engineers that studies or evaluates subjects that are into framing standards for the HVAC&R industry including design. It is a platform where these industry makers, players including the manufacturers, producers and distributors come together for research on subjects pertaining to their specialisation and cater a better and advanced services to the different countries of which India is one of them. For instance, ASHRAE and ISHRAE jointly have already framed standards/guidelines for chillers, air handling units, VRF, cooling towers, etc. Eventually, every product will have its own set of standards/guidelines, which we are expected to and must follow. These standards and the advancements are coming year on year, which is helping the industry in India to maintain a substantial growth. ASHRAE, as a body has got more than 55,000 of members across the world, who are jointly working as TGs (technical groups), where the worldwide leaders collaborate (including India) their researches and their expertise to bring in innovative solutions to the problem are and cater to better advanced services. ASHRAE sets the workable standards for worldwide products.

Upcoming technological innovations
ASHRAE does thorough studies in developing efficient systems, including renewable energy based cold storages for the usage of common farmers. A lot of research has already been carried out in this direction, including in India and now all efforts are going on in making it commercially viable.

Amod Dikshit,
President,
ASHRAE – Mumbai Chapter