Mahindra Lifespaces Developers Ltd – Vasudha Sharma – 2023

Goals

MLDL engaged Climate Corps fellow Vasudha Sharma to develop a portfolio-wide water strategy for their residential projects, to achieve their target of making their developments water-secure by 2030. The project entailed identifying initiatives, setting targets and proposing an action plan. It also included the study of prevalent green building rating systems and benchmarking the performance of MLDL with national peers.

Solutions

The holistic water strategy for MLDL comprised of two phases: construction and use. For the construction phase, Vasudha analyzed data from projects since 2019, including water sources, consumption, constructed area, consumption intensity, and savings. She made projections until 2030 to determine water consumption scenarios and calculated the offset requirements to achieve water neutrality annually.

For the use phase, Vasudha quantitatively analyzed reduction, reuse, and return measures, identifying Net Zero Water projects. She suggested design elements for projects to reach Net Zero Water status.

Potential Impact

In its construction phase, MLDL has an average water consumption of 150,000 kilo litres per year, with an expectation of an increase in the coming years. As a result of the initiatives identified, MLDL can reduce its water consumption significantly, thus reducing the need for offsets to achieve water neutrality. In the use phase, by using low-flow fixtures, MLDL reduced its overall water demand by over 30%. Furthermore, incorporating the other initiatives as suggested in the action plan will aid in achieving Net Zero Water projects.