Cept’s new Mecca of green-tech will practise what it preaches

The new building that is to be constructed at the Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT) to house its new facility - the Centre for Sustainable Environment and Energy (CSEE) - will be truly unique. It will be a zero-pollution ‘green’ building which will generate its own electricity from sustainable sources such as solar energy.

The CSEE has been functioning at CEPT for the last two years though it was formally inaugurated only last Saturday (March 13) by minister of state for industry Saurabh Patel.

Rajan Rawal, a CEPT faculty member who is also the coordinator of CSEE, said the CSEE is primarily a centre for research in ways to make constructed structures more energy efficient.

“Our main work is to do research in areas such as design of buildings for energy efficiency, undertake ‘energy modelling’ to predict how much power a building would consume once constructed, and test building components for fuel efficiency,” Rawal said.

The construction of the CSEE’s new building will be sponsored by GEDA, and funded by money from the Union government, the state government, and the United States agency for international development (USAID). The centre is set to acquire Rs2.5 crore worth of testing machines, in addition to the machines (worth Rs2.5 crore) that it already has.

The sustainable energy centre will also advise people on how to make optimum use of windows and building material to make their structures more energy efficient.