KARACHI: Imagine your home illuminated by natural light, with circulation of fresh air, running on solar energy and a roof garden providing you with fresh organic fruit and vegetables. Well, the city needs such housing, it was evident during the round-table conference on ‘Working for energy-efficient Karachi’ organised by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (FNF) Sustainable Initiatives and Shehri — Citizens for a Better Environment here on Wednesday.

The home though still on paper is the brainchild of young architect Summaiyah Sajid. She designed it for her thesis. “It would make a lot of difference if you and I build such houses with wind catchers and sun paths and recyclable water that make more energy than what they can use,” said the architect.

She said that in order to build such a house one should first know the climate of the place where it would be located. “As there is so much wastage of energy there, I’ve designed my house for Defence Housing Authority, where the climate is humid so the aim is to keep the room temperatures within the comfort zone,” she said.

She explained that a house was exposed to the sun from the roof and windows. And this heat could be managed to control the temperature inside for the windows could be glazed and the roof could be treated. “We can calculate how much illumination is needed where. For instance we need more light in the kitchen so we can put in big windows there. Also the window frame, depending on whether it is aluminium or wood, matters in generating of heat, as does the outside paint,” she pointed out.

To help make the roof cooler, she has given the home a roof garden. The water, too, in this well-planned and energy-efficient house is recycled, for example, the grey water, which is waste water other than from the human waste sewage, is stored in a separate tank to be used for flushing toilets.

Throwing more light on making Karachi energy-efficient, Farhan Anwar, technical director, Sustainable Initiatives, said that they were launching a four-month project on raising awareness of the subject among schoolchildren, too. “It is about how the common person can make a difference,” he said.

Going further into the issue, he said that the age of industrialisation was from where this all misuse of energy started. “But the age also changed the shape of the world. Suddenly along with the industry, there were rail roads and steam engines, extraction of fossil fuels, exploration for natural resources, green house gases, global warming, concentration of human settlements to give birth to the modern city and new shapes of class conflicts,” he said.

“And today even though the technology is there, instead of looking at renewable energy such as wind or solar power, we are turning towards coal. We really ought to look into lessening our carbon footprint through research-based target setting, prioritising actions, enacting proper legislations and providing initiatives for the private sector and community to participate in all this,” he added.

Dr Shahid Amjad, former head of the National Institute of Oceanography spoke about harnessing the power of ocean energy. “Harnessing the ocean’s power would reduce our dependency on fossil fuel. The tides are active 24 hours a day and can give you energy for 365 days. But generating energy from it costs more. Also the technology for doing it is not yet fully developed,” he pointed out.

Mohammad Khalid, environment consultant and expert on the solid waste management system, spoke about Karachi’s waste that amounts to 12,000 tonnes per day but isn’t used to its full potential in recycling and converting into energy, etc, due to it being controlled by more than one agency such as the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, district municipal corporations, cantonment and housing societies.

“The collection of garbage is also done through different means and its transportation isn’t uniform either. So during the collection you disturb its composition, too, with food waste, wood, plants, sand and stones and wet waste all mixed together,” he said.

Dr Syed Raza Ali Gardezi of Shehri spoke about the people’s right to information that could bring transparency in the energy sector.

Syed Nusrat Ali, senior consultant with the City Institute of Image Management spoke about their work of making the city greener and peaceful.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2015

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