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Noida Expressway sees realty boom

ADB makes first investment in Indian renewable energy firm

New battery to help renewable energy production

The Sixth GIREM Leadership Summit

(GLS) – with the theme of ‘The New Dawn for Indian Real Estate and Emerging Cities’ was held on October 24 at Delhi. The 2013 sum-mit provided insights into the changing eco-nomic scenario and market behaviors which are poised to show an upward trend post the downturn and recession effects. This global sum-mit also served as a plat-form to network with the most influential people from the real estate sec-tor and connect with key decision makers.

Speaking about the summit Shyam Sun-dar S Pani, President GIREM, said, “This year the summit entailed some insightful discus-sions with the recession more or less over and above a positive fore-cast ahead. At this point we must work towards seamlessly integrat-ing the public and the private sector so as to offer optimal lucrative

solutions in terms of real estate and infrastruc-ture development over the next two decades. The challenge is not just to achieve growth plat-forms across industry spectrums but to sus-tain this growth. This can only be done by partnering with the pri-vate sector and chan-nelising our efforts col-lectively with them. There is also a serious need to fine tune these plans with our city plan-ners as they are respon-sible towards voicing the needs and integrat-ing them with our cit-ies. The industry has flourished in the past 20 years, but it is now time to look forward and gear up towards mak-ing the next chapter for this industry more illus-trious and rewarding.”

The event also facili-tated the Sixth GIREM Leadership Awards, awarding the most respectable names across the Indian real estate industry. This year’s winners included,

Pirojsha Godrej of Godrej Properties Ltd who was awarded the ‘Person of the Year Award’ and Anurag Tyagi of Morgan Stan-ley who was awarded the ‘Real Estate Corpo-rate Head of the Year’.

Speaking on the event, Dr. Sudhir Krishna, Secretary, Urban Development said, “Post indepen-dence the government believed in pushing populations from the cities to the rural areas, that trend has since been corrected. We

have realised that the cities are the engines of growth with high co-relation between the development of the cit-ies and the develop-ment of the countries. I would like to congratu-late GIREM for identi-fying that the real driv-ers of the economy are those who are working towards the planned urbanization of the country. It gives me great pride to see the 21 cities that have made it to the list of best busi-ness destinations in the country. I hope that

GIREM continues this great endeavor and the government will con-tinue to provide them with as much encour-agement and support they need.”

Like previous sum-mits, GIREM, featured prominent figures as guest speakers, such as Sangeeta Prasad, Chief Executive Officer, Inte-grated Cities & Indus-trial Clusters, Mahindra Lifespace Developers Limited and Ernest Rwamucyo, High Com-missioner for Rwanda to India.

Sixth GIREM Leadership Summit 2013

Skyrocketing con-struction and labour costs are putting pres-sure on developers in Delhi-NCR region to abandon affordable housing in favour of more lucrative luxury projects.

Developers such as DLF, Unitech, Tata Housing, Omaxe, Supertech and Amra-pali that had earlier promised to embark on affordable projects to attract lower income group buyers are now dropping the idea,

despite the demand for houses, as narrow profit margins make these projects unviable to the builders.

As per industry esti-mates, the maximum demand is for houses in the price bracket of Rs 25 lakh to Rs 40 lakh.

The developers claim that between August 2010 and January 2013, the prices of key raw materials have gone up significantly. For exam-ple, the price of essen-tial materials such as cement and brick has

jumped by as much as 60% and the steel prices have doubled.

“The rise in the price of building materials will escalate the over-all cost of production, which in turn will be passed on to the buy-ers,” said R K Arora, chairman and manag-ing director, Supertech Limited.

Delhi, NCR realty developers keen on luxury projects over affordable housing

Three Indian cities in the list of top 10 affordable office marketsA report by prop-erty consultant DTZ says that after Sura-baya (Indonesia) the Indian metropo-lis, Hyderabad is the second most afford-able office mar-ket globally. Other Indian cities, Pune and Chennai, at fifth and sixth positions, also feature in the list of world’s top 10 most affordable office markets.

At US$ 23500

London’s West End has emerged as the least affordable office market globally, according to the con-sultant. The report presents the costs of occupying prime office space across 126 markets worldwide.

Demand for residen-tial and the commer-cial property on the Noida-Greater Noida Expressway is attract-ing investors, buyers and realtors owing to the infrastructure and good connectiv-ity of the area. Resi-dential sectors have developed on the sides of the Noida-Greater Noida Express-way, which fur-ther connects to the 165km-long Yamuna Expressway.

Some of the big projects by leading developers on this

stretch include Uni-tech Grande, JP Wish Town, Amrapali’s

Heartbeat City and Hanging Garden, ATS Pristine, Supertech’s

Supernova, Para-mount Floraville, Ajnara Daffodil,

Prateek Edifice, Logix Blossom Greens, and Gulshan Ikebana.

Noida Expressway sees realty boom URBAN NEWS DIGEST | DEcEmBER 2013 • 2humane cities | habitat, housing, real estate

aDB makes first investment in indian renewable energy firmThe Asian Develop-ment Bank (ADB) has decided to invest $30 million in Hyderabad-based NSL Renew-able Power Private Ltd. The investment is also ADB’s first pri-vate sector assistance to India’s hydropower sector. The bank, with participation from

nearly 67 countries, invested $2.3 billion in renewable projects in Asia in 2012-13.

In 2013-14, it tar-gets to invest another $2 billion, said Lak-shmi Venkatachalam, Vice-President (Pri-vate Sector and Co-financing Operations) at ADB.

NSL Renewable will use the invest-ment proceeds to par-tially finance the con-struction of its 100 MW Tidong run-of-rover hydropower project in Himachal Pradesh and the 75 MW Chilarwadi wind power project in Maharashtra.

New battery to help renewable energy productionA low-cost, long life battery that could enable solar and wind energy to become major suppliers to the electrical grid has been developed by the researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stan-ford University.

As solar and wind’s combined contributions to

an electrical grid approach increase, energy storage sys-tems must be avail-able to smooth out the peaks and valleys of this “intermittent” power – storing excess energy and discharg-ing when input drops. The new flow battery has a simplified, less expensive design that presents a potentially viable solution for large-scale production.

Japan has decided to build the world’s larg-est offshore wind farm to replace the crippled nuke plant at Fuku-shima after the nuclear disaster in 2011. The country plans to build a total of 143 wind tur-bines on platforms 16 kilometres off the coast of Fukushima by 2020, which is home to the damaged Daiichi nuclear plant.

The wind farm will gen¬erate 1 giga-watt of power once completed, and is part of a national plan to increase renew-able energy resources

following the post-tsu-nami shutdown of the country’s 54 nuclear reactors.

The project is part of Fuku¬shima’s plan to become com¬pletely energy self-sufficient by 2040, using renew-able sources only. Plans are also in place to build the country’s biggest solar park.

The wind farm will sur¬pass the 504 megawatts gen¬erated by the 140 turbines at the Greater Gabbard farm off the coast of Suffolk, UK — cur-rently the world’s larg-est farm.

Major roads in India may also generate solar energy, if an innovative proposal by some scien-tists gets the approval from the government.

The proposal is the brainchild of scientists at the Gujarat Energy Research and Manage-ment Institute (GERMI) in Gandhinagar.

In a paper just pub-lished in the Interna-tional Journal of Energy, Environment and Engi-neering, the scientists explained highways can be used to generate solar power, if a roof of solar panels was laid over

them across the length of the roads. The photo-voltaic (PV) panels that convert sunlight into electricity are normally spread out on land.

“While the price of PV panels is decreas-ing day by day, the price of land and its avail-ability are constraints in the development of

solar power, especially in India,” said Tirumal-achetty Harinarayana, director of GERMI and one of the authors of the paper.

“Our proposal over-comes this obstacle by using the space over the highways for placing the PV panels,” Harinaray-ana said.

Roof over roadways to generate solar power

Japan to replace Fukushima N-plant with world’s largest wind farm

URBAN NEWS DIGEST | DEcEmBER 2013 • 3