Faiza Solanki, regional technical and business development specialist, International Finance Corporation, World Bank Group Member on Wednesday said several banks offered rebate on interest rates for those building green homes. This applied for those constructing individual houses and building homes commercially.

During a panel discussion moderated by N. Ravikumar of The Hindu on ‘Real Estate and Sustainability: Building growth without building environmental debt’, at the CPCL-The Hindu Sustainability Summit 2026 held in the city, she said banks had a list of eight points to be covered for individuals.

Ms. Solanki said more and more commercial buildings and residential buildings were going for green certification. “From 2013, main stream green certification has been growing. It is still growing. Even affordable buildings such as the Tamil Nadu government’s Thozhi Hostels are green verified,” she added.

She said the major barrier in people going in for green certification was the lack of understanding about the benefits. “For most commercial spaces in Tamil Nadu, monsoon is a tricky business. When buyers see how much resilient a structure is, how much man hours have been saved, they will be interested. Similarly, when buyers invest in new houses they are going through a capital finance. If there is home loan reduction they will go for it.”

Vishwajit Kumar, Managing Director, Navin’s Housing, said many commercial buildings were going net zero carbon and tenants too were willing to pay for the facilities created in terms of renewables. “Though it does not cost significantly more than a regular building, unlike commercial sector, residential buyers do not ask for it.”

Bharath Kumar Venkatesan, managing partner, Urbando, said that from their perception, many customers view sustainable building as a tag of luxury. Customers look for comfort and convenience rather than go for aspects that could give a good life and increase their life span. People were spoilt they want to splurge.

All the panelists called for the need for the State government incentivising green buildings. “An additional free FSI would be great. If such a programme is run for say a decade, it would easily become the standard,” they said.

The panellists also elaborated on how traditional homes in villages still used sustainable materials and incorporated features such as mitham (open courtyards) in their designs.

The summit is supported by Chennai Petroleum Corporation Limited (CPCL) as the Presenting Partner, with NLC India Limited, Larsen & Toubro (L&T), Navin’s, WABAG, Tamil Nadu Newsprint and Papers Limited, Indian Bank, Urbando and State Bank of India as Associate Partners.

The summit’s sustainability-focused partnerships include Thermax as the Sustainable Cooling Partner, Treeni as the Sustainability Intelligence Partner, Chennai Port Authority as the Blue Economy Partner and Tamil Nadu Green Climate Company as the Climate Action Partner.

Mangaldeep is the Fragrance Partner, Puthiya Thalaimurai the TV Partner, The Federal the Digital TV Partner and Communitree the NGO Partner.

Start-ups working on sustainability solutions need to be supported from the ideation stage to help innovative ideas translate into viable technologies, panellists said at The Hindu Sustainability Summit 2026 held in Chennai on Wednesday (September 23, 2026).

At a session on ‘Ideas to Impact: Start-ups accelerating the energy transition’, speakers discussed about the current status of start-ups, challenges they face and the support needed to scale their innovations.

Elaborating on the importance of incubation and entrepreneurial activities, Indumathi M. Nambi, Environment and Water Resources Division, Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Madras, said not many incubators supported students at ideation stage and many students too did not register with incubators. This indicated a gap in the existing incubation eco system. There was a need to create pre-incubators that could help students develop and test their ideas.

At IIT Madras, gaps had been identified after the piloting stage and corporates and industries must step in to bridge them. Highlighting that funding was not an issue for deep tech start-ups, she said a major roadblock was the trust about new ideas.

Doctoral programme

She also suggested introducing a doctoral programme in entrepreneurship to help students demonstrate scaled-up products and receive mentorship support for commercialisation.

Speakers called for greater collaboration between industries, academic institutions and start-ups. They also stressed the need to introduce entrepreneurship as a subject at the school level to help students pursue careers aligning with their interests.

Pravin Dongre, Executive Director, Indian Oil Corporation Limited spoke about IOCL’s journey in encouraging the start-up ecosystem. Various start-ups across the value chain, including those working on clean and green energy and water, had received funding with support extended for 18 to 36 months. Some had reached proof of concept stage and some of them, including projects such as eco toilets and nano fillers for oil pipelines had been commercialised, Mr. Dongre said.

He stressed the need for start-ups to have clarity on long-term development. Incubation mechanisms could benefit both start-ups and industries. More support mechanisms were needed to take innovations from modular solutions to commercial scale, he said.

Speakers also emphasised on the need for collaborations to address critical environmental challenges such as air pollution and water issues.

Pointing out various challenges faced by start-ups, Karthika Gopi, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Carbelim, said achieving net-zero goals did not have a one-stop solution but required an umbrella of solutions. Testing technologies in real world conditions was often challenging, while protecting intellectual property and achieving commercial scale-up were other hurdles.

Start-ups, particularly deep tech start-ups, needed consortium-based support as investors had to be patient during gestation period. Start-ups must also explore international support and generate early evidence to validate their technologies, she said.

Such consortium-based support from industries and the government would pull out ideas from the lab and facilitate the emergence of new technologies, she added.

The session was moderated by Sangeetha Kandavel, Senior Assistant Editor, The Hindu.