In many developing countries, rising energy demand, and consequently carbon emissions, is seen as an unequivocal indicator of increasing prosperity. This trajectory has important consequences not just for global carbon emissions but for the ability of countries such as India to achieve its developmental goals. This is because, in most developing countries, growth in energy demand far outstrips growth in supply due to the large capital investment required to build energy infrastructure. Thus, even people *with* access to energy networks often find that they are unable to meet their comfort needs due to supply shortages. However, the most critical problem is often not mean demand - e.g. mean per capita energy demand in India is only 13% that of the UK - but rather **peak demand** as it lays immense stress on already fragile networks. Hence, people's ability to attain comfortable internal conditions is compromised at the precise time that they need it the most - during extreme heat or cold. This project directly addresses the problem of peak demand reduction by aiming to eliminate peak demand in buildings, where it is created. In most developing countries, the vast majority of the building stock of the future is still to be built, so there is a real opportunity to decouple economic growth from building energy use whilst ensuring comfortable conditions. We aim to achieve this through laying the foundations for a **new science of zero peak energy building design** for warm climates. This will be achieved through a careful consideration of the weather signal (now and in the future) which is critical for any realistic assessment of mean dan peak energy demand. A second focus is on delivering a method of construction that is compatible not only with the Indian climate but also its building practices and social customs, thus avoiding the trap of an "imported" standard. This will be delivered through the creation of 60 pathways for a range of building types in 6 cities comprising different climates. Finally, we will also consider how loads can be moved between buildings to achieve a smooth demand profile at network level.

The aim of SARASWATI 2.0 is to identify best available and affordable technologies for decentralized wastewater treatment with scope of resource/energy recovery and reuse in urban and rural areas. Further, it addresses the challenge of real time monitoring and automation. The previous SARASWATI project has shown that a number of decentralized wastewater treatment plants in India do not perform properly and that there are few plants that would meet the more stringent standards as those proposed by the Indian Government in 2015. Thus, in many cases not even CATNAP (the cheapest available technology narrowly avoiding prosecution) has been applied, leading to high pollution levels. The SARASWATI project therefore proposed to adopt the principle of BAT (best available technologies) in a more flexible way, adapting the definition of BAT to the local context, based on complementing the treatment efficiency with the costs of the treatment technology and affordability, and local context in the location of application. This will allow to identify BATs with more stringent standards if required and suitable for the location. Thereby, ten pilot technologies in 7 Indian States demonstrating enhanced removal of organic pollution (BOD, TSS), nutrients (particularly Nitrogen), organic micro-pollutants and pathogens have been proposed (WP1). Further, all pilots allow for resource recovery contributing to the principles of a circular economy and will undergo a comprehensive performance assessment (WP2) complemented by an extended sustainability assessment informed by recent ISO standards (WP4). This will allow identification of BATs for the Indian context. In addition, suitable automation and control strategies will be tested and recommended, taking into account the presence of operators and their level of knowledge and expertise (WP3). Finally, WP5 is dedicated to dissemination and exploitation of results. The consortium is comprised of a well-balanced EU-Indian team of 17 partners.

The ecosystem services of deltas often support high population densities - estimated at over 500 million people globally, with important examples in south, south-east and East Asia. As noted in the IPCC AR4 Assessment, deltas are one of the most vulnerable coastal environments and their ecosystem services face multiple stresses in the coming years and decades including (1) local drivers due to development (e.g., urbanisation) within the delta, (2) regional drivers due to changes in catchment management (e.g. dam construction), and (3) global climate change, especially sea-level rise, Understanding how to sustain ecosystem services and reduce poverty and vulnerability in deltaic areas requires consideration of all these stresses and their interaction. This Partnership and Project Development Grant (PPDG) aims to develop a larger proposal that will develop methods to understand and characterise these multiple drivers of change for the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta, explore their implications for poverty and vulnerability of the delta residents, and develop management systems that are resilient in the face of the large uncertainties that exist for the 21st Century. The Ganges-Brahmaputra delta is selected as it is one of the most vulnerable deltas (embracing most of Bangladesh and West Bengal, India), but the methods that are being proposed will be transferable to the management of other delta systems in Asia, Africa and South America. This PPDG integrates across multiple scales of investigation that are often explored independently in different disciplines. Hence, integration of natural science, engineering and social science views is critical and this will be a key step which the PPDG will explore, building on existing experience in the project team such as within the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. The PPDG aims to develop a proposal that integrates all the above issues for both the baseline and future conditions, using poverty or poverty-related outcomes as the key indicators. The proposal will also consider critical intervening factors such as governance and political will in tackling both corruption and the social and economic effects of climate change and other hazards. Poverty outcomes will be considered as a much wider spectrum of wellbeing than just money metrics, which may not be relevant in this setting. We will explore the effect of the scenarios on health, education, social capital and security as well as asset poverty and nutritional levels. Previous research will be developed in order to understand the effects of differing underlying resilience and vulnerability levels among the coastal populations. Particular interest will be focussed on possible thresholds of social capital and material wellbeing, after which the multiple stresses above would have catastrophic effects, including knock on effects such as mass migration. Analysis will occur at various levels - including effects on the individual, the household, the community, the wider area and ultimately the whole nation and delta. The PPDG will develop the research consortium across three countries (UK, Bangladesh and India) and refine the research questions identified to develop a proposal for the December 2010 submission. In particular, it will allow us to embed the research in the Ganges-Brahmaputra to facilitate take-up of the policy recommendations that would emerge if the full proposal was funded.

Owing to on-going demographic shifts, urbanisation and changing life styles supported by rapid industrialisation, pollution by so-called emerging contaminants (ECs) is an emerging environmental and public health concern in India, the UK and globally. Pharmaceuticals, personal-care products, pesticides & industrial compounds, are collectively known as ECs. They lead to, among other effects, increasing antibiotic resistance and endocrine disruption in aquatic animals and possibly humans. Conventional wastewater treatment plants (WTPs) have a mixed performance in dealing with such contaminants and might even be adversely affected by the ECs in treating more conventional pollutants. There is also evidence that WTPs can act as reservoirs of antibiotic resistant pathogenic bacteria. Due to limited availability of data, the fate of ECs in the environment and wastewater treatment remains under-investigated, limiting our ability to provide targeted cost effective treatment. The research aims to study the sources and fate of ECs and their interactions in receiving waters and WTPs and develop novel and sustainable management strategies to improve water quality. In the project, two rivers will be monitored: the Yamuna in the north (in the most polluted stretch, contributing to 70% of Delhi's water supply needs) & the Cauvery in the south (the most abstracted river in India). Investigations will also be made on the fate of ECs during wastewater and sludge treatment line at 10 WTPs in India and compared with selected plants in the UK. Investigations will also include, the fate of ECs during the treatment and use of bio-solids. The work will help to develop evidence based wastewater discharge standards and guidance for safe use of contaminated sludge. We will also look to develop novel, cost effective and fit for purpose solutions for the treatment of ECs in urban and rural communities. Several approaches will be investigated including zero/limited energy consuming natural treatment systems configurations; and space saving systems based on the development and novel application of a new generation of adsorbents; energy efficient membranes and chemicals free treatment. The work will help the development of design and operation guidance for optimal treatment systems requiring limited input from O&M staff. Finally, we intend to develop a novel decision support system to automatically generate and identify sustainable treatment strategies as a function of user defined constraints and contexts. This will serve as a negotiation tool to visualise the impact of different stakeholders objectives and preferences. The tool will be trialled with a range of end users in India and UK.