The second wave of COVID-19 had witnessed an acute shortage of medical oxygen in different parts of the country. While the crisis in the bigger cities was more about responding by overcoming supply chain limitations, in smaller cities and villages, the crisis exposed a chronic lack of medical oxygen infrastructure.

Overcoming the crisis required combining the advantages of personalized Oxygen concentrators for home uses with a capacity of 5 to 10 litres per minute (lpm) and Oxygen plants with a capacity of 500 lpm for large hospitals. The 500 lpm plants for hospitals are robust. But, they lacked the portability required for deployment in resource-poor settings. The personal concentrators, on the other hand, were portable but too fragile to be used on a sustained basis in hospital settings. There was a need for a robust technology with necessary portability.

The team at JNCASR has come up with a solution that meets the requirement, addressing, among other things, the several novel design challenges posed for the sourcing of materials. The device is based on the principles of Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) technology. The team replaced lithium zeolites (LiX) which is usually used in oxygen concentrators, with sodium zeolites which does not generate toxic solid waste and can be manufactured in India.

Although the science behind is well understood, developing an engineering solution that can work with sodium in a portable device and fill this specific market gap when there are severe sourcing problems posed engineering challenges. Obstacles had to be overcome at each stage of the cycle, from working with the available zeolites to effective ways of dehumidifying and designing the right adsorption-pressure cycle.

Named OxyJani, the device is modular and can deliver a range of solutions. It is an entirely off-grid solution that can facilitate deployment in rural areas. Moreover, the waste from the plant can be potentially a good agricultural input material.

It was a multi-group initiative. Dr S. V. Diwakar, Dr Meher Prakash, and Professor Santosh Ansumali from JNCASR, worked in collaboration with Professor Arvind Rajendran from the University of Alberta and Mr. Arun Kumar of Eiwave Digitech.  The project was executed with the help of Mr. Ritwik Das, a MS student. Prof. M. Eswaramoorthy, Prof. Tapas Maji, and Prof. Sridhar Rajaraman provided technical advice. Professor G. U. Kulkarni, President, JNCASR and Professor Amitabha Bandyophyay of IIT Kanpur mentored developmental efforts. The financial assistance for the prototype was provided through JNCASR and the Nidhi Prayaas scheme of IIT Kanpur. The zeolite material used the development of the device was obtained as a donation from Honeywell UOP, Italy.

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Keywords: Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, JNCASR, rural, emergency, supply chain, infrastructure, home use, hospital,  resource-poor, portability, design challenge, lithium zeolites , sodium zeolites, modular, off-grid solution, University of Alberta, Eiwave Digitech,  IIT-Kanpur,  Honeywell UOP, Italy.

The Indo-Gangetic plain is exposed to significant emissions of black carbon (BC). However, most of the pollution-based epidemiological studies essentially relate exposure to particulate mass concentration (PM 10 / PM 2.5) that invariably treat all particulates with equal toxicity, without distinguishing individuals by their source or composition, though they may have different health consequences. Importantly, the health effects in terms of mortality due to black carbon aerosol exposure have never been evaluated in India.

A team of researchers from the Government of India’s Department of Science & Technology-Mahamana Centre of Excellence in Climate Change Research (DST-MCECCR) at the Varanasi-based Banaras Hindu University has filled the gap. They explored the individual as well as the cumulative impact of Black Carbon aerosol; fine (PM 2.5) and coarse (PM 10) particulates; and trace gases (Sulphur dioxide, Nitrogen dioxide, and ozone) on premature mortality in Varanasi.

The town, which is a typical urban pollution hotspot in the central Indo-Gangetic Plain, experiences very high aerosol loading and trace gas concentrations throughout the year due to the prevalence of a subsidence zone and observed decadal increasing trends both in Aerosol Optical Depth and Black Carbon aerosols.

The Scientists, supported by the Climate Change programme of the Department of Science and Technology, studied the daily all-cause mortality and ambient air quality from 2009 to 2016 and found a significant impact of Black Carbon aerosols, Nitrogen dioxide and PM2.5 exposure on mortality. The inclusion of co-pollutants (Nitrogen dioxide and PM 2.5) in the multi-pollutant model increased the individual mortality risks for Black Carbon aerosols.

The effect of pollutants was more prominent for males, age group 5 to 44, and in winter. They found that the adverse effect of air pollutants was not limited to the current day of exposure but can extend as long as up to five days due to the lag effect. They further showed that mortality rose linearly with an increase in air pollutants level.

Professor and Coordinator of MCECCR, Dr.R.K. Mall led the study. The team included Nidhi Singh, AlaaMhawish, Tirthankar Banerjee, SantuGhosh, R. S. Singh. They have published a report on their work in journal “Atmospheric Environment”.

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keywords: emission, environment, health, Indo-Gangetic plain, pollution, epidemiological, studies, particulate, PM 10, PM 2.5, toxicity, aerosol, trace gases, Sulphur dioxide, Nitrogen dioxide, ozone, Varanasi, aerosol optical depth

A new mathematical analysis conducted by researchers from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IITG) and IIM Bangalore has established a relationship between the carbon footprint of companies and the potential risks of investing in these firms.

As the world looks to move towards a sustainable future and economies everywhere try to reduce their carbon footprint, the future of companies that rely on excessive emissions of Greenhouse Gases (GHG) remains uncertain.

An extensive data analysis of over 200 of the largest listed companies in the American market was carried out by the researchers from these top Institutions. To assess the carbon footprint of the companies, direct GHG emissions of the companies and purchased GHG emissions (in power consumption or heat) were considered.

The Research Team included Prof. Siddhartha Pratim Chakrabarty, Department of Mathematics and the Mehta Family School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, IIT Guwahati along with Prof. Sankarshan Basu from the Department of Finance and Accounting, IIM Bangalore and Mr. Suryadeepto Nag, a BS-MS student from IISER Pune.

The findings of this analysis were published in arXiv, a curated research-sharing platform maintained by a team at Cornell University, U.S. The link to the paper can be found at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.06518  

The researchers found that most of these companies (71.6%) had shown a decrease in their carbon emissions in the 2016-2019 period. It was found that carbon footprint had a positive correlation with the size of the companies and the revenues. However, the correlation with expenses was found to be slightly less than that with revenue, which they attribute to the higher expenses of switching to renewable energy sources.

Highlighting the important findings of this research, Prof. Siddhartha Pratim Chakrabarty, Department of Mathematics and Mehta Family School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, IIT Guwahati, said, “On analyzing the data of annual stock returns, along with data of GHG emissions and other financial data (revenue, debt, and book value, among others), it was found that there exists a ‘carbon risk premium’ in the stock returns, which means in the short term, higher carbon emissions are found to be inflating the price of the stocks. It was found that a higher carbon footprint gave higher returns to investors in the short term.”

Further, Prof. Siddhartha Pratim Chakrabarty added, “The past couple of years has seen a lot of research in climate finance, and the existence of a carbon risk premium has been confirmed independently by many researchers worldwide. The existence of such a premium has been attributed to ‘carbon transition risk.’ As the adverse effects of climate change become more and more visible, governments around the world may soon impose regulations on GHG emissions or levy higher taxes and charges on companies that contribute significantly to global warming.”

If this happens, companies will begin losing profits, and in the case of extreme regulations, may even go into debt or bankruptcy, and the value of their shares may plummet. This could result in severe losses for investors, and the ensuing sell-offs could lead to other losses in the broader market.

While the estimation of the risk premium has been carried out multiple times in the last few years, there has not been much progress in quantifying future risks, until now.

In their paper, the collaboration finds a mathematical relationship between the carbon risk premium and the value of the future risk. The researchers studied the risk for different scenarios for when the regulations or “carbon transition” may happen and find a formula for the maximum exposure of each firm to the transition for different times in the future.

For one family of arrival processes (models for when the transition will happen), they find that the price of the average stock in their data could fall (at most) by 20.65% at the transition, if the transition is expected to happen in 10 years’ time from now, and 41.3% if the transition is expected to happen 20 years from now. The corresponding figures for most of polluting firms are 45.04% and 90.08% respectively.

The researchers also demonstrate the different scenarios in which investors could profit from the premium-risk tradeoff as well and show the cases in which it is more profitable to hold on to a stock for the premiums and those where it is more profitable to sell or short the shares.

The study highlights that the worst possible inundation scenarios projected for Lakshadweep Islands are almost similar under different emission scenarios projected and all the islands in the archipelago would be vulnerable to impact from sea-level rise.

One of the major threats in the coming years is rising sea level and its significant impact on small islands and this is for the first time, that climate model projections were used to assess the potential areas of inundation over the archipelago of Lakshadweep Islands in the Arabian Sea.

A team of scientists including Aysha Jennath, Athira Krishnan, Saikat Kumar Paul, Prasad K. Bhaskaran jointly from the Department of Architecture & Regional Planning and Department of Ocean Engineering & Naval Architecture, IIT Kharagpur, with support from the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India under the Climate Change Programme (CCP), studied the Climate projections of sea level rise and associated coastal inundation in atoll islands, a ring-shaped coral reef or island.

The study estimated that smaller islands Chetlat and Amini are expected to have major land-loss. Projection mapping indicated that about 60%-70% of existing shoreline would experience land-loss in Amini and about 70%-80% in Chetlat. The present work highlights that, larger islands Minicoy and the capital Kavaratti are also vulnerable to sea-level rise, and expected to experience land-loss along 60% of the existing shoreline. Sea-level rise effects are seen to have the least impact on Androth Island under all emission scenarios.

The research that was published in the journal ‘Regional Studies in Marine Science, Elsevier recently showed that the coastal inundation could have wide socio-economic impact. According to the team, projected inundation due to sea-level rise can impact the islanders as residential areas are quite close to the present coastline. Also, the only airport in the archipelago is located at the southern tip of Agatti Island, and has a high likelihood of damage due to inundation from sea-level rise.

The authors have suggested that keeping in view the impacts from projected sea-level rise for Lakshadweep, it is necessary to have appropriate coastal protection measures and best-practices to formulate planning guidelines.

This study also opens up a new outlook and dimension on future research to assess the directional nature of wave energy, impact of storminess in the Arabian Sea region, islands that are exposed and sheltered and amenities such as potable water, sanitation and so on.

This noteworthy study has practical value and can be immensely useful to policy makers and decision making authorities for both short and long-term planning that benefit the population in Lakshadweep Islands.

Low-income group users mostly cannot afford the high cost of treatment technologies available for handling oily wastewater generated at their source points. As a result, large amount of untreated oily wastewater is discharged into the aquatic bodies without following the guidelines of the Pollution Control Board.

The technology developed by Dr Chiranjib Bhattacharjee, Professor at the Chemical Engineering Department in Jadavpur University, Kolkata, uses a combination of Electrocoagulation and Electroflotation Enhanced Membrane Module (ECEFMM) techniques for waste water treatment.  Electrocoagulation is a waste water treatment technique that uses electrical charge for changing the particle surface charge, allowing suspended matter to form aggregates, and electroflotation is the separation of suspended particles from water using hydrogen and oxygen bubbles generated by passing electricity through water.

In the developed module, electrocoagulation and electrofloatation are adjoined with membrane in a single indigenous setup. The turbulence created because of the hydrogen bubbling through the feed medium or the waste-water resists the deposition of oil over the membrane. The synergistic effect of hydrogen bubbling and rotation of the membrane module creates substantial turbulence within the solution and on membrane surface. On application of electric field during membrane separation, membrane fouling is substantially reduced, and membrane longevity is also enhanced by restricting the membrane ageing for prolonged time period. Thus, it requires less frequent membrane replacement, thereby reducing the maintenance costs to a great extent.

The innovation being an economically feasible wastewater treatment technology (both in terms of capital and recurring investment) for low-scale and medium enterprises, has a good market potential. Moreover, unlike other conventional treatment, it can break the highly stable oil-water emulsion through electric discharge and simultaneously separates oil from water with high efficiency. Besides, by integrating the electrochemical process setup with the membrane module in a single hybrid ECEFMM setup, one process has been eliminated. This significantly lowers the initial capital investment expense along with the additional advantage of reduced installation area requirement.

This technology developed with support from the Advanced Manufacturing Technologies programme of the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India requires minimal manpower and does not need high-end technical adequacy for its operation, thus reducing the operational expense to a large extent. The recovered spent oil after oily wastewater treatment can be further used as an industrial burner oil, furnace oil, mould oil, hydraulic oil and so on. Thus, it creates a huge revenue generation scope for low-income groups by selling this collected spent oil. In a zone of densely concentrated garages, installation of one setup will serve the purpose of wastewater treatment and thereby extend the opportunity towards other low-income group users to control the water pollution level within PCB regulations. It is aligned with the ‘Make in India’ initiative. The validation and testing of the prototype have been successfully accomplished, and the pilot-scale validation and testing is on the verge of completion.

So far, the separation technology running in different sectors for treating such oily waste water involves the installation of an electrolytic cell or DAF followed by membrane unit. However, installing two separate units requires a high footprint area compared to the present unit, where two-unit operations are being assimilated in a single unit, said Dr. Bhattacharjee. 

This prototype innovation has proceeded towards level 6 of the Technology Readiness Level, and Dr. Chiranjib Bhattacharjee has partnered with Concepts International for industrial collaboration and scale-up of the innovation. He plans to further carry out a field run with the pilot-scale module, networking and field installation, and Commercialization of the equipment through start-up.

The formation of small molecular clusters of sub-3nm size is technically called aerosol nucleation, and subsequent growth of these newly formed clusters to the large sizes is called atmospheric new particle formation (NPF). NPF occurs everywhere in the terrestrial troposphere, and therefore it is a large source of aerosol numbers to the atmosphere. Though extensively studied globally using field observations, laboratory experiments and modelling approach, it is largely unexplored in India.

Scientists from the University of Hyderabad measured neutral sub-3nm particles for the first time at an urban location in India. Dr Vijay Kanawade and Mr Mathew Sebastian used AIRMODUS nano Condensation Nucleus Counter (nCNC) to measure particle size distribution in the size range of 1 to 3 nm.

In the study supported by the Department of Science & Technology (DST) under Climate Change Programme Division, they conducted continuous observations since January 2019 at the University of Hyderabad campus site and reported the formation rate of small molecular clusters in sub-3nm size regime, where aerosol nucleation triggers. This work has been recently published in the journal ‘Atmospheric Environment’.

The research showed that a pool of sub-3nm particles is often present in the atmosphere, but how fast these clusters grow depends on various factors. The scientists observed that only half of these events showed newly formed molecular clusters growing past 10 nm size. Thus particle size distributions display a conventional banana-shaped aerosol growth, which is indicative of regional NPF event.

The team found a strong positive correlation between sub-3nm particle concentrations and sulphuric acid concentrations, confirming the potential role of sulfuric acid in the formation of sub-3nm particles. While NPF often starts with sulphuric acid in the atmosphere, sulphuric acid alone fails to explain observed particle formation and growth rates in the atmosphere. Other vapours such as ammonia, amines and organics play a crucial role in the growth of newly formed particles. Moreover, these newly formed particles did not always grow to large sizes, and the team hypothesized that the particle growth was limited by lower concentrations of condensable vapours such as organic compounds, calling for research using state-of-the-art instrumentation to understand the mechanisms driving NPF in diverse environments across India.

Figure 1. Scatter plot of hourly averaged particle formation rate of 1.4 nm particles (J_1.4) versus sub-nm particle concentrations (N_sub-3nm) as a function of sulfuric acid concentrations ([H₂SO₄]_proxy) for Type-I (open circle) and Type-II (plus sign) NPF events in Hyderabad. The mean values of J_1.4, N_sub-3nm, and [H₂SO₄]_proxy for other sites in diverse environments across the globe are also plotted for comparison. * indicates winter-time measurements. The colour scale shows the concentration of [H₂SO₄]_proxy.

Facilities for accurate and precise determination of major, minor, and trace element concentration from natural water samples is critical for quality environmental and geochemical research. This multi-user facility will serve as an open access center for characterization of dissolved metals and metalloids for environmental and geochemical researchers from across the country.

The facility set up at the Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bangalore under a multi-institutional project consists of combination of the two instruments which allows for accurate and precise determination of concentration for metals and metalloids from 100 ppm to 10 ppt (9 orders of magnitude).

The project ‘Fast Forward to SGD6: Acceptable and affordable water in secondary Indian cities (4WARD)’ under its Urban Water Systems programme, awarded to a cluster of institutions (IIT Bombay, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Amritha Vishwa Vidyapeetham, and IISc) and led by IIT Kharagpur, supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) focuses on identification and alleviation of water quality and quantity related challenges faced by Tier-II Indian cities.

The instrumentation includes a Quadrupole Inductively Couple Plasma Mass Spectrometer fitted with collision reaction cell (QQQ-ICP-MS) and an Inductively Couple Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometer with dual detection capability (ICP-OES).

At this analytical facility detection limits for key environmental toxins (viz. Cr, Fe, Ni, Cu, As, Se, Pb) are all less than 5 ppt. However, the ICP-OES is efficient in determining concentration between the range of 100s of ppm (mg/L) to less than 100 ppb (µg/L) level.  The QQQ-ICP-MS, equipped with multiple reaction and collision gases, is efficient across six orders of concentration values going down to less than 10 ppt (ng/L).

Newly designed smart window material can effectively control the amount of heat and light passing through it in response to an applied voltage. Such smart window materials would help developing efficient automatic climate control systems in buildings, researchers said. The results of their study have recently been published in the journal, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells.

The primary consumption of energy in buildings is by the climate control system, in which energy-consuming devices are used to maintain comfortable indoor temperature and brightness. Hence, a building’s heating, cooling, and lighting loads are major energy-consumption segments in any building. To meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, a building’s energy intensity— how much energy buildings use—will have to improve by 30 percent by 2030.

“There has been increased attention to sustainable architectural designs for better light and heat management in buildings in recent years, and deploying smart windows is the first step for such structures”, said Dr. Debabrata Sikdar, Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, IIT Guwahati. Conventionally, window designs are static, i.e., they are predesigned for specific climatic conditions. The emergent smart windows, on the other hand, can dynamically adjust the amount of light and heat radiation entering a building in response to external stimuli, thus conserving the building’s energy.

The design of smart windows that are tuneable for all-weather conditions is challenging. The IIT Guwahati team has designed smart window ‘glasses’ using noble metals as well as their relatively inexpensive alternatives that can dynamically control the intensity of transmitted solar radiation, depending upon the weather/climate condition.

“We have proposed an electro-tuneable glass made of two ultra-thin metal layers sandwiching an electro-optic polymer whose refractive index can be changed by applying a small voltage, which allows filtering of visible and infrared radiation,” explained Mr. Ashish Kumar Chowdhary, Research Scholar, IIT Guwahati.

The researchers used this design to perform simulation studies to understand the light and heat transmission properties in response to the applied voltage. They initially considered gold and silver as the metal layers, but later tested their model with cheaper alternatives such as copper, and transparent semiconductor such as indium tin oxide.

When the researchers simulated the application of a bias voltage ranging from −15 V to +15 V across this sandwich structure using Finite Element Methods, the smart glass could selectively filter solar radiation, spanning the visible, infrared and shortwave infrared wavelengths. Simulation also showed that this material reflected mid-wave infrared, long-wave infrared (LWIR; 8–15 μm), and a part of far-infrared wavelengths thereby providing insulation from heat and light reflected from neighbouring buildings and structures.

” We believe that our smart windows can provide an alternative solution for maintaining ambient indoor temperature and lighting inside a building or a vehicle by integrating those with usual glass windows or walls, thereby reducing the need of air-conditioning systems ” said Dr. Debabrata Sikdar.

These smart glasses can find applications for efficient automatic climate control in vehicles, locomotives, airplanes and greenhouses of the future. The smart glass material proposed by the IIT Guwahati team can easily be fabricated using existing state-of-the-art nanoscale fabrication methods such as e-beam evaporation and graphoepitaxy techniques.

Keywords: Smart materials, Climate control in buildings, UNEP, Energy consumption, Carbon emissions, Indoor temperature, Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Guwahati, Smart window

The AIM-ICDK Water innovation challenge was placed to identify promising innovators from India, who could represent and form the Indian participation in the global Next Generation Water Action program hosted by International Water Association and Denmark Technical University. The challenge saw innovation submission from 400+ applicants and eventually identified a total of 10 Indian teams including 6 Student teams and 4 startup teams from across the country.

The selected teams formed the Indian participation for the ‘Next Generation Water Action’- an initiative anchored by DTU to engage young talents from leading universities and innovation hub of 5 countries (India, Denmark, Kenya, Ghana and South Korea) to build their skills and apply their technical disciplines, innovation capacity and solutions to challenge and catalyse water solutions towards smart livable cities.

As part of the India challenge, student and startup teams were invited to present their ideas in following challenge areas: Digital water management solutions, Solutions for monitoring and prevention of leakage in city water supply, Waste water management across rural belts and urban settlements, Rainwater harvesting in rural and urban settlements, and Safe and sustained drinking water.

India in addition to sending participation to the challenge was also a challenge partner host. AIM was the challenge-host for India, Ghana water company for Ghana, Ramboll Foundation for Brazil, Grundfos Foundation for Denmark and Daegu Metropolitan for South Korea. The selected teams across the participating nations worked with each of the challenge partners.

India, as a challenge partner, hosted three Indian student teams and one team each from Denmark and South Korea, these teams worked on solving India specific challenges; additionally, one Indian team participated in Ghana, Denmark and Brazil specific challenges.

The global program saw participation of 11 startup teams, 4 from India, 3 from Denmark, 2 from Kenya and 2 from Ghana. The startup teams competed at International level for the Innovation awards at Next Generation Water Action finals. The four startup teams from India include Agromorph, Digital Eco-Innovision, Troncart Solutions and Mecentro. AIM onboarded academic partners – IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay and International Center for Clear Water at IIT Madras and Incubator partners – AIC- Sangam and AIC FISE to guide the teams. Teams working on India problems were provided mentorship support by a carefully curated and illustrious panel of water experts. Additional support was provided by the Next Generation Water Action team in form of virtual knowledge, mentorship and networking sessions.

The teams submitted their final innovation submission on 30th April 2021, after a three-month long development phase from February-April 2021. The student after which teams took part in the global semi-finals on 12th May 2021, hosted by their respective challenge host countries. Of the 6 Indian student teams that presented in the semifinals, 4 were shortlisted to pitch their solution in the finals.

While the startup teams pitched directly in the Global finals, an event hosted by DTU on 18th May 2021.
The final event was held physically in Denmark Technical University with participation virtually from local hubs in 5 participating nations. India hosted its final all virtually and as part of as part of the final event, a panel discussion was hosted by Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission Dr Chintan Vaishnav.

Speaking during the final event Dr Chintan said, “I commend all of the innovators for working on water related issues, as both technology and business model innovations in this sector require much creativity and grit. I also thank the Innovation Center Denmark for hosting this worthy challenge.”

The panelist presented their perspectives on future of water technology innovations in India. The panel discussion was followed by the global final event, which saw participation of all the participating countries, partners and innovators. Dr Chintan Vaishnav addressed the gathering as keynote speaker and announced the winners of the Indian challenge.

The following India teams were announced winners in the Final event of the Next Generation Water Action:

Student teams:
1. Acceleration award: Vaishali and Kowshalya  for their solution Sustainable Management by Affordable Recovery Technologies (SMART).
2. Most promising solution: Mihir Palav and Ektavyam team for their solution – technology enabled multi stakeholder platform for water governance.
3. International World Water Congress 2022 Scholarships: Mihir Palav and Ektavyam team for their solution – technology enabled multi stakeholder platform for water governance.

Startup teams:
1. Top 5 startups: Two Indian startups Agromorph led by Akansha Agarwal and Digital Eco innovision led by Mansi Jain were selected among top 5 startups.
2. International World Water Congress 2022 Scholarships: Agromorph led by Akansha Agarwal

The partnership between two Innovation bodies – Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog from India and Innovation Centre Denmark – is aligned with the goals of the larger the Green Strategic Partnership between India and Denmark, a Statement of Intent (SoI) was signed between both bodies on 12th April 2021. AIM and ICDK shall continue to work together for the greater good in the area of environment and sustainability.