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ELEC-H551

Sustainability and Ecological Economics of ICT

academic year
2025-2026

Course teacher(s)

Jan Tobias Mühlberg (Coordinator)

ECTS credits

See programme details

Quadrimester(s)

See programme details

Language(s) of instruction

english

Course content

  • Sustainability frameworks, Sustainable Development Goals, planetary boundaries, ecological economics, and critical theory for computer scientists and electrical engineers
  • Sustainability across different aspects of computing: software engineering, equipment, security and privacy engineering
  • Impact and life-cycle assessment for ICT products
  • European digital policy and sustainability

Objectives (and/or specific learning outcomes)

The objective of this course develop an understanding of ICT's pervasive and transformative role in modern economies, and the need for people who develop ICT products, including computer scientists and electrical engineers, to embrace approaches that lead to products that contribute to societal sustainability considering for dimensions of this term: human, social, economic and environmental sustainability. The course conveys basic concepts in sustainability theory, explores economic models behind the way ICT systems are currently developed and marketed, and dives into concepts of just sustainability, ecological economics, but also into technical aspects of designing and assessing the sustainability of ICT systems. Students will critically reflect on current practices and develop a toolbox that allows them to build upon in their future careers.

The course strives to link theoretical knowledge with current industry practice and will feature a few interventions from guest lecturers who highlight and discuss recent industry trends, policy development, as well as a number of exercises and self-study tasks to provide hands-on experience and to deepen the students' knowledge on more specialised subjects.

The course is open to engineers/computer scientists from different backgrounds: computer sciences, computer engineering, telecommunications, and others.

Prerequisites and Corequisites

Required and Corequired knowledge and skills

  • Understanding of software engineering and ICT product life-cycles
  • Programming skills, preferably some background in Python

Teaching methods and learning activities

The course involves students in group projects to identify challenging problems in developing the relationship between Information and Communication Technologies and different aspects of sustainability through lectures, extensive reading, practical challenges, and discussion.

Laboratories and self-study exercises include:

  • Life-Cycle Assessment of ICT products
  • Measuring the environmental footprint of software systems
  • Exploring and studying different system designs under sustainability perspectives
  • Literature surveys, focus groups, collaborative exercises

References, bibliography, and recommended reading

  • Becker, C., 2023. Insolvent: How to reorient computing for just   sustainability. MIT Press.
  • Hauschild, M.Z., Rosenbaum, R.K. and Olsen, S.I., 2018. Life cycle assessment (Vol. 2018). Springer International Publishing, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56475-3.
  • Manjunatheshwara, K.J. and Vinodh, S., 2021. Sustainable electronics product design and manufacturing: State of art review. International Journal of Sustainable Engineering, 14(4), pp.541-551.

Course notes

  • Université virtuelle

Contribution to the teaching profile

Understanding sustainability as a concept that needs to penetrate all areas of society and that is increasingly required across industries and research. In more and more product domains but also, e.g., in research grant applications, being able to justify how research and development efforts measurably contribute to sustainability is a must. Therefore, sustainability measurement, understood as a set of frameworks or indicators to measure how sustainable something is, are an essential part of the toolbox of young engineers and scientists. This course will teach students the basics of quantifying sustainability indicators in the electronics and ICT sector, and of arguing how some development effort contributes to societal sustainability in the context of international assessment frameworks such as the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals.

Other information

Contacts

Jan Tobias Muehlberg <jan.tobias.muehlberg@ulb.be>

Campus

Solbosch

Evaluation

Method(s) of evaluation

  • written examination

written examination

  • Open question with short answer
  • Open question with developed answer

Language(s) of evaluation

  • english

Programmes