In the following article, Meera Siva, Director at Shelter Venture Fund sheds light on the future of green solutions in sustainable housing and construction.
Save for brief experiences outdoors, in nature, our lives – from birth to death – are lived in built spaces. We literally build our lives around the built environment, and yet construction of that environment is highly resource intensive and pollutive. Globally, construction accounts for 40 percent of energy consumption, 40 percent of all raw materials, 25 percent of all timber products and 16 percent of water consumption, while producing 25 percent of CO2 emissions and 45-65 percent of waste deposited in landfills.
And the stakes are only getting higher. As we head into a future that will see higher high and lower low temperatures – causing health concerns and/or necessitating higher energy consumption – estimates show that 75 percent of the infrastructure that will exist in developing countries in 2050 is yet to be built.
And extreme weather events, such as floods, come with increased frequency disproportionally displace the poorest communities, there is greater need to improve the construction materials and designs of homes to respond to these now-inevitable changes.
But opportunity exists in these challenges. IFC estimates an investment opportunity of $1.4 trillion in green buildings, with $1.25 trillion in the residential and $228 billion in the commercial sector. Still, despite this large and immediate market, housing remains far from the spotlight at many climate change conferences. Perhaps this is understandable, if you see it as a ‘difficult’ sector filled with property moguls with their bricks and mortar, sitting on a foundation of archaic processes, weighed down by complex regulations. Why hit against this wall when there are low hanging fruits in sectors such as agriculture, electrifying ideas in energy and changes roll-out easier in mobility?
(But, if this is how you find yourself thinking about the housing sector, I’d encourage you to reread the statistics at start of this essay and ask yourself, are such assumptions not precisely why we find ourselves facing both a global housing and climate crises today?)
We see the opportunity in this crisis. Habitat for Humanity International’s Shelter Venture Fund invests in housing innovations that address affordability, access and quality. Three (out of a total of 12) of our investments are in India and they are all working on sustainable ways to make quality housing and allied services accessible to low-income households. And, contrary to widely held assumption that green products come with a premium, their solutions focus on affordability, and sustainable materials and methods as a means towards it.
Take the case of EcoSTP Technologies, which has a zero-power sewage treatment solution that reclaims water. Their solution saves space by sitting underground; this makes it a popular choice in cities, where most new construction is expected to occur. Besides huge cost saving, requiring no electricity makes the solution a valuable choice in remote areas. It has treated 1 billion litres of wastewater since 2017, saving nearly 2000 MW of power (equivalent to 1600 tonnes of coal), enough to light 15 villages for a year.
EcoSTP has over 190 clients representing builders of all sizes – from homes to factories, schools, office buildings, religious places, small communities and forest departments. It operates pan-India and looking to expand globally. In a nod to the multi-dimensional impact of sheltertech, the startup won the ET NOW Leaders of Tomorrow award in the Health and Wellness category! (While GreenJams Buildtech, which makes bricks from agri waste and is another partner of Habitat’s Terwilliger Center, won the energy and environment category).
In core housing technologies, 3D printing has the potential to disrupt the sector with its ability to use innovative materials, such as construction and demolition (C&D) waste, to build adaptive, disaster resilient designs faster, with less material used and wasted. The Shelter Venture Fund’s investee Tvasta Construction has built multiple homes with its in-house, end-to-end 3D printing solutions and has demonstrated its ability to build fast (COVID units), green (industrial waste materials) and climate-smart designs (domes and cool-walls).
Examples of sustainable building materials are plentiful – in India and globally. These materials, often being locally sourced and/or diverted from waste streams, can also be also more affordable than conventional alternatives. Plus, many are engineered to also offer energy cost savings. Data on roofs made by ReMaterials based in Ahmedabad, measured by Selco Foundation showed that the homes were 5 degrees cooler on average. Talk about a cool investment idea!
The journey of these startups has been brick by brick, but sits on a strong foundation. It highlights how affordability is the key to adoption of green solutions in the construction sector, particularly in housing.
Ms. Meera Siva, Director, Shelter Venture Fund, manages the impact-first fund focused on low-income housing innovations. She started her career as an engineer in the Silicon Valley, designing semiconductor chips and systems; she has several patents in this domain. She worked at the Hindu Business Line, a financial newspaper in India, covering listed equity, personal finance and startups. Ms. Siva has also co-founded RaNa Investment Advisors, a consulting firm that worked with startups, angel investors and entrepreneur support networks for investment and market research, due-diligence and advisory. She is a Board Member of CFA Society India, a member Society of CFA Institute, USA.
Background of Shelter Venture Fund (Habitat for Humanity)
Habitat for Humanity, a global nonprofit organisation, through its Shelter Venture Fund invests in and nurtures innovative entrepreneurs and small-but-growing businesses focused on improving housing conditions for the world’s 1.6 billion people living in slums or inadequate housing.
It invests in shelter entrepreneurs operating in the “pioneer gap” – where early stage companies are often considered too nascent or too risky for conventional venture capital firms. The intent is to accelerate those entrepreneurs’ pathways to reaching low-income families with products and services that improve their housing conditions.
