Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Management strategies and policies to achieve sustainable flows of energy and materials in the economy. Eco-efficiency strategies reduce these flows while resource substitution strategies seek more environmentally benign flows. Applies expertise from economics, ecology, thermodynamics, engineering, geology and behavioral sciences. Equivalent Courses: MRM650

COURSE DETAILS:

This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to addressing sustainability issues in energy and materials. Because students may have backgrounds in diverse fields, such as engineering, natural sciences, economics and policy analysis, key concepts are introduced without requiring extensive background knowledge in any specific discipline. And while the course is more focused on energy flows in society, the analytical approaches are equally applicable to material flows (such as water and phosphorous). The course is applied, focusing on how research can contribute to issues of pressing concern to humanity – with special emphasis on the climate risk. There is also a focus on the communication of research findings to policy makers, media, industry, non-government organizations and the public at large, and the challenges for applied academics when contemplating some degree of engagement in social-political activism.

Key dimensions of the course include:

• Assessing how human-induced flows of energy and materials are, or might become, a challenge for sustaining the earth’s life-support capability and the cohesion of human societies;
• Exploring thermodynamic, technological, geological and biological options for changing the character of these flows toward a greater likelihood of sustainability;
• Potential implications of these options from an ecological, economic and social perspective; and
• Institutional and policy mechanisms (local, regional, national, global) for advancing these options.

Course content

• Efforts to define sustainability from a thermodynamic, geophysical, ecological, and economic perspective (Georgescu-Roegen, Ayres, economic growth debates, etc.);
• Analytical techniques and concepts for goal setting with respect to energy and material sustainability (conservation and abatement cost curves, rebound effect, biomimicry, etc.); and
• Assessing the effectiveness of alternative institutions and policies for initiating and implementing some of these techniques (policies for externalities, design of successful international energy-environment agreements, pursuit of energy access in developing economies, etc.).

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: