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Dr. Hariharan Chandrashekar is an Indian environmental economist, entrepreneur, green business mentor, writer, policy advocate and urban analyst.
Chandrashekar is the founder of Biodiversity Conservation India Limited, a builder of environmentally friendly homes, and of AltTech.Foundation, which focuses on zero energy development strategies for buildings.
Chandrashekar runs a series of online education and policy dialogues under the Prem Jain Memorial Trust, INHAF India and the AltTech Foundation.
Chandrashekar [1] is working to create 250,000 job in India in collaboration with the CII, the Institute of Logistics, the IPSC, and several water management companies.
Career
In 1991, Chandrashekar founded the Academy for Mountain Environics. This organization works on local solutions for kitchen energy and for villages in the Garhwal of Uttarakhand state.
In 1994, Chandrashekar founded Biodiversity Conservation India Limited. His company worked on innovative designs to promote substainability in construction.
ZED Homes[2] [ 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.
Chandrashekar 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.
Chandrashekar 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, Chandrashekar 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.
Chandrashekar 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..
Chandrashekar 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.
Chandrashekar 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
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- 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.
External links
References-
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 TEDx Deccan- Do Green- Dr. Chandrashekhar Hariharan, retrieved 2020-06-16
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 T-ZED Homes, retrieved 2020-06-16
- ↑ "Bengaluru Central University". Retrieved 2020-06-16.