Guest post by Sangeeta Ray, Jeevan Doifode, and Pawan Mulchandani, Siemens India
“Sustainability continues to be increasingly business-relevant and demanded by our stakeholders”
Sustainability is now seen as an important aspect for the successful development of an organization. Incorporating sustainability features in emerging or new construction seems to be more convenient compared to an existing. At Siemens, we have taken several steps to bridge sustainability performance of existing locations with modern sustainability requirements which addresses energy, water, biodiversity, and social equity.
Carbon Neutrality and Energy Efficiency Programs
Committed to our Carbon Neutral objective by 2030, we have a clear path to lower our carbon footprint in the existing portfolio. Siemens real estate portfolio within India, covers 625,446 square meters of built-up area, among which 54% is contributed from manufacturing locations and 44% of office spaces and 2% others.
Focusing on carbon neutral objective, Siemens India has undertaken energy efficiency programs across different locations. These programs emphasize on implementing efficiency measures which includes thermal energy storage system, LED-fication in over 93% offices, energy efficient air-compressor, harmonic reduction, etc. By implementation of such efficiency measures, over the period of 3 years, Siemens India was able to reduce 4,605 tCO2 which is equivalent to Carbon sequestered by 66,687 tree seedlings grown for 10 years.
We believe that, only energy efficiency is not enough to meet carbon neutral targets. Installing on-site renewable energy and procurement of Green power are more prominent ways to go carbon neutral. By installing 2,985 kWp capacity of Solar PV systems across our factories and procuring Green Power for office spaces, we have offset 4,614 tCO2 over the period of 3 years, which is equivalent to Carbon sequestered by 77,649 tree seedlings grown for 10 years.
Water Efficiency
Siemens water strategy primarily aims toward managing water efficiently and economically. As of 2019, Siemens India was able to reduce per capita water consumption by 22% over the period of 3 years using water efficiency techniques such as low flow fixtures, waterless urinals and reusing sewage treated water. Additionally, Smart water savers and automatic control valves being used to ensure minimum water wastage.
Biodiversity
At Siemens, we believe that nature plays an important role in sustaining life on Mother Earth. Due to enormous growth in urbanization and continuous raw material demand over the past 50 years, biodiversity has been impacted significantly around the world. Siemens India is contributing to biodiversity by facilitating local biodiversity measures at existing locations.
Few of the measures are mentioned below –
- Promoting regional flora and fauna by creating urban forest
- Preventing green areas with natural habitat from construction activities
- Promote local habitat by creating near natural water bodies, nesting aids and bird feeders
Sustainability Benchmarking
As a sustainable company, we aim to ensure profitable, long-term growth, lasting value for all our stakeholders, and a positive impact on the economy, society, and the environment. In addition to energy and water efficiency, we believe that other sustainability measures are also required to addressed.
Aiming towards the same, within Siemens India, we have initiated pilot sustainability benchmarking program across five factory locations. This program will assess the sustainability performance in a holistic way considering national and international requirements. The outcome of this assessment will result in short-term and long-term targets to improve sustainability performance for respective factory location.
As a future step, we are also in the process of exploring the opportunities for ESG certification which can help Siemens India real estate business to better benchmark and market assets and development projects.
About the authors:
Sangeeta Ray, Head of Asset Management Real Estate India Bangladesh, Siemens Ltd.
More than 25 years’ experience including leadership position in various field: Real Estate, Strategy, Business Administration, Operations, Audit
Jeevan Doifode
Mechanical Engineer working at Siemens India under Technical Project Management team as Technical Expert. Jeevan is Certified LEED AP and BEE Energy Auditor, carries overall 9 years of diversified experience in Sustainability, HVAC, BMS and Project Management.
Pawan Mulchandani
More than 13 years of experience in driving sustainability in Real Estate sector. Pawan has wide experience in life cycle management of real estate ranging from designing of air conditioning systems, project management of MEP in real estate, green building certification, driving energy efficiency projects, decentralized energy systems, digitalization of real estate and sustainability reporting.