The course covers both end-of pipe strategies and preventive strategies to decrease the environmental impact from the material and energy use of the society.
The teaching consists of lectures, seminar and project work. In the course start, students choose a case in the form of a product, process or service with a considerable potential for improvement. This case will be followed throughout the course in a focused project work to analyse how the product can be developed in a more sustainable way through different strategies.
The strategies will be presented through lectures and associated literature. After the lectures, the students will work with their cases related to the strategies. During the course, supervision and seminars are offered.
The course ends by completing and presenting a project report and completing an individual reflective assignment.
The overall aim of the course is that the students should develop proficiencies and knowledge of how central sustainability problems related to the material and energy use of the society can be handled. This will be achieved by training the students in applying, analysing and assessing the suitability and relevance of different strategies to tackle different types of sustainability problems. Strategies will in this course be approached in the interplay between market, technology and policy, and how different actors are influenced. After passing the course, the students should be able to:
- Explain how different strategies and measures can be used to address sustainability problems related to the material and energy use of the society, and discuss how the strategies relate to one another.
- Describe and discuss how different factors such as the market, innovation and policy interacts to solve sustainability problems.
- Apply the knowledge above by critically analysing and evaluate organizations sustainability strategies and approaches.
- Identify and delimit problems and suggest well justified strategies and measures that improve the sustainability performance of products, processes or services.
- Discuss and analyse sustainability-related problems and strategies together with other students, present in writing and provide arguments for your conclusions.
