Hariharan Chandrashekar

Hariharan Chandrashekar is an Indian economist who turned to business in the late 1980s. He has presided over projects on water, energy and green buildings for over 30 years. He is an environmental economist, entrepreneur, green business mentor, writer, policy advocate and urban analyst. He is the founder of AltTech.Foundation, a non-government, not-for-profit, industry-led and industry-managed Trust. Its mission objective and his work over thirty years has focused on zero energy development strategies for buildings with freedom from the grid for energy, water and waste.

From mainstreaming sustainability with powerful demonstrations of economic possibility he has moved to accelerating sustainability.

He runs a series of online education and policy dialogues under the banners of the Prem Jain Memorial Trust, INHAF India and the AltTech Foundation.

Dr Hariharan[1] also is working to create a quarter million jobs for skills based opportunity with collaborations with the CII, the Institute of Logistics, the IPSC, a few marquee companies in water management. In the higher education sphere, he is leading initiatives to usher in programmes that will make budding architects, engineers and business managers to become market ready and industry relevant.

Career

His work as founder chairman of Biodiversity Conservation India Limited (1994-2017) led to the creation of homes that defined the grail of green in times when the world had not yet stirred to the threats of climate change. His work on designs for the envelope and beyond the envelope of buildings have signified the pioneering of some of the best green and sustainable practices in the construction sector from about 1991, when he founded the Academy for Mountain Environics and worked on local solutions for kitchen energy and localized solutions for villages in the sub Himalayan region of Garhwal.

ZED Homes[2] [standing for zero energy developed homes] with over 2,000 homes spread over 14 projects have stood testimony to what can be achieved within the enterprise mode with a business base of over USD 100 million when he stepped down as executive Chairman in the mid 2010s.

From mainstreaming sustainability as founder of those enterprises over 25 years, he has moved on to accelerating sustainability with special focus on urban, industry and agriculture, as the 2020s offer exciting prospects of technology, data analytics, AI and ML for a host of solutions for both existing and new buildings.

He has worked with development institutions like the World Resources Institute and the Asian Development Bank, Les Ateliers Maitrise d’Oeuvres Urbaine, Paris, ADEME, UN Habitat and others. He mentors green start-ups on their business models for sustainable solutions with low-carbon footprint for products and services in areas of energy, water, waste and air management. Under another program he has worked on studies relating to residential apartments and energy outcomes. As an expert panel member for other global organisations, he has been engaging businesses, communities, institutions and entrepreneurs to accelerate the adoption of market-based solutions to shift energy use from fossil fuel to clean, renewable energy resources and promote energy efficiency and Demand Side Management among industrial, commercial and institutional users.

He has also served as Technical Member for Karnataka Urban Water Supply & Sewerage Board -2012-13] as well as a sustainability advisor for the Bengaluru Central University in Bangalore[3], among a host of other institutions over 20 years.

As a mentor to a clutch of leading green solution providers in energy-water-waste-air management, he steers strategic product and service interventions for AltTech Consortium that is impacting over 4 million Sft of existing buildings of different typologies in 2020 alone with the central thrust being creation of retrofit eco solutions that assure IRR of 20 percent on investments to heighten Energy Efficiency.

He has worked for over 30 years on projects covering watershed management, building design and master plans, energy management and other areas relating to urban sustainability. He is a prolific writer and runs columns in national dailies and portals on how consumers can go green at minimal cost.  He has steered demonstrations of global standards of sustainability on projects over 25 years and a few million square feet of distinctly green building campuses..

He has been driving urban initiatives at the Indian Green Building Council. Over years, he has served as consultant for governments of Uttaranchal, Kerala and Nagaland on eco-conscious tourism infrastructure and environment policies, apart from serving as consultant for urban water supply and sanitation development for the Manila-based Asian Development Bank. He has also consulted on energy practices for the Paris-based ADEME, an EU institution for promoting energy efficiency in buildings and in cities.

In essence, all his work, as an NGO founder [1991-2006 with Academy of Mountain Environics, Dehradun, at AltTech Foundation [founded 2004] and as an entrepreneur launching a half-dozen companies in the areas of green residential buildings and green products [1994-2015], and then as itinerant mentor for green entrepreneurs, all his work has centred around deep decarbonisation, energy-water nexus, energy productivity, transformative technologies and the circular economy.

He has pioneered grid-free homes since the mid 1990s with progressive designs for homes and other buildings with structural efficiency, low-carbon building materials, and architectural design of spaces for passive elements to be in place, with zero import of water, very low import of energy and zero export of waste water or other solid waste.

One of the most awarded builder entrepreneurs in the Indian building industry for mainstreaming urban sustainability, his experience in design and implementation, in accelerating sustainability with online education modules that he is currently presiding over with a small team of professionals, with Watergy [water+energy Courseware]  real-time modules for budding engineers and architects, facility managers and corporate professionals, is  securing interest of young professionals.

He is founder-Trustee of the Prem Jain Memorial Trust [2018], New Delhi which has initiated a slew of programmes for sustainability education for school children, and poor and meritorious students of engineering and architecture. He is currently working on two books both in these domains that he has inhabited over four decades.

Alt.Tech Foundation

Dr Hariharan is also the founder-director of Alt.Tech Foundation [ATF], a not-for-profit organisation that has been working on energy and water solutions for over the past decade.

Awards
  • His projects have been awarded the San Diego Green Award, the IENS Award from Kanagawa, Japan, the Green Apple Award from the UK, the Asian Water Champion honour from ADB, Manila, Innovation awards from Bangkok and Singapore, among others.
  • In Feb 2010, he was conferred the distinguished Udyog Rattan Award for Excellence by the Institute of Economic Studies, New Delhi.
  • The Week magazine chose him in Dec 2011 among '30 Indian Pearls' to commemorate their 30th anniversary.
  • The Builders' Association of India conferred its Distinguished Green Builder Extraordinaire award on him in Jan 2012.
  • He is chosen to be a core committee member of the CII India Green Business Council and co-author of the IGBC Residential Green Guidelines.
  • He is a member of the Advisory council of the S&T Park, Pune. He is also member of the National Advisory Council of the CII-ITC Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Development.

References-
  1. TEDx Deccan- Do Green- Dr. Chandrashekhar Hariharan, retrieved 2020-06-16
  2. T-ZED Homes, retrieved 2020-06-16
  3. "Bengaluru Central University". Retrieved 2020-06-16.
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