Engineers & sustainability. Problems, Paradoxes and Possibilities

Engineers & Sustainability
Problems, Paradoxes and Possibilities

Didac Ferrer, Karel Mulder,
Harro Van Lente, Jordi Segalàs

D. Ferrer-Balas “Engineering & Sustainability” Lisboa, SEFI, 29/9/11

Contents
Engineering & Sustainability

1. Problems & Paradoxes
2. Possibilities
3. Conclusions


Ecological
year is
“finished”


Evolution?


Engineers & Sustainability


When we ‘ll have finished
creating the problem, we’ll
start with the solution
D. Ferrer-Balas “Engineering & Sustainability” Lisboa, SEFI, 29/9/11 (Roto)

1% of high altitude wind could cover world’s energy demand

http://www.tendencias21.net/TENDENCIAS-DE-LA-INGENIERIA_r19.html

Why Refrigerators?
• Perishable food problem: loss of
fish and vegetables, risk of food
poisoning

• Toxic/flammable refrigerants:
Ammonia, SO2, CH3Cl,
hydrocarbons ..

• Search for safe refrigerants: non
toxic, non flammable and effective


Chloro-Fluoro-Carbons

1928 Synthesis by Thomas
Midgley

Main advantages:
•effective
•Non-toxic
•Non-flammable
•Somewhat more expensive


Cleveland accident:
May 15th, 1929: 128 people died of methyl-chloride poisoning

1930 CFC Refrigerant


Other applications

Airconditioners
CFCs: Solution for dangerous
spray cans


CFCs as global threat

1970 Lovelock traces CFC’s in wind at Western Ireland
1974 F. Sherwood Rowland (UC-Irvine), Mario Molina
1984-5 Joe Farman
1987 Protocol Montreal


So?
• 1930: miracle solution: “really sustainable”
• 1974: New issue: atmospheric effects,
serious doubts
• 1987: “ozone killer”


Types of knowledge
• What we know
• What we know we don’t know
• What we don’t know we don’t know

How to to manage poorly defined problems &
uncertainties?


Post-normal science
When uncertainties are either of
epistemological or the ethical kind, or when
decision stakes reflect conflicting purposes
among stakeholders… the appropriate
scientific approach will be based on the
assumption of the unpredictability,
incomplete control and a plurality of
legitimate perspectives
(Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1993)


Naive conceptions ….

“Sustainable because 100 % recyclable”,

“Sustainable Energy, because 100% from renewable sources”


• Sustainable technology is only a useful concept if it involves
hardware and software: a socio technical praxis


Technology only makes sense by its
social context

Scale:
• The fossil fueled car is sustainable (<1000)

• Rural biofuel energy production: sustainable even if it is
rather inefficient
• Efficient biofuel production in industrial countries:
unsustainable (it ruins local ecosystems, transport,
endangers food security).

24

What is Sustainable Technology?
Why is this an important question?

SD is a holistic concept:
meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs

But is ill defined at the micro scale……

articulation(s): expressions of SD in regard to needs of people:
• Maintaining air/water/..
• quality,
• healthy,
• not depleting resources,
• not contributing to climate change,
• ……


SD Articulations
Various articulations of SD
– Clean
– Non depleting
– Safe
– Creating options for underprivileged
– …..
Which change over time

And create dilemma’s
– Food or fuel
– Supporting Africa’s poor or being recyclable
– Emitting x or y
– ….
– …
26

Safe or fuel efficient?

27


So Engineering Design: a Perpetuum
Mobile? (perpetual motion)

• Or not even that? As it is a
waste of brains?


Dilemma’s and Paradoxes
Various SD articulations are important in engineering design

SD Articulations might change over time

SD articulations often create dilemmas

But dilemma’s might turn out to be paradoxes by clever innovation

How to deal with the dilemmas/paradoxes of SD in technology
development?

29

What is Sustainable Technology?
1. What is sustainable technology? K. Mulder, D. Ferrer, H. van Lente
2. Perceptions of technology: An historical overview A.W. Stahel,
3. Chlorofluorocarbons: Drivers of their emergence and substitution K. Mulder
4. Vehicles of sustainability in the field of nanocoatings H. van Lente,
5. Articulations of sustainability in the development of wind power in the Netherlands L. M. Kamp,
6. Environmental technology in a new urban neighbourhood: Stockholm’s Hammarby Sjöstad R.
Wennersten and A. Spitsyna,
7. Trade-offs in the district heat distribution system M. Svanström, M. Fröling
8. Municipal solid waste: Treatment, management and prevention C. Block and C. Vandecasteele,
9. What is a sustainable transport system? Dilemmas regarding transport solutions in Sweden, R.
Wennersten and A. Spitsyna
10.Reducing material use in passenger cars 1920–2020: Balancing energy, waste and safety E.
Tempelman
11.Hydrogen: a stack of competing visions S. Bakker
12.Sustainable technologies for water treatment J. Morató, A. Pires Carneiro and A. Ortiz,
13.Dilemmas in water systems development in China X. Song and W. Ravesteijn
14.Conclusions: perceptions, paradoxes and possibilities K. Mulder, D. Ferrer, H. van Lente


Broadening the Innovation process in space and time

31


Levels of innovation
Systems renewal
Renovación
based on needs
basada en
20 &necesidades y
functions
funciones
Efficiency factor

Process or
Mejora del
product
proceso o
improvement
producto
5
optimization
Uso óptimo

2000 time 2050
(Jansen,, 2003)

32

Implications
• Consider technology in its broadest sense (materials, organisation,
infrastructure…)
• Involve stakeholders:
– To recognise dilemmas
– To discuss values and interest, the engineer cannot decide on behalf of others
– Take care of quality debate in society
– Do not hide value- and interest discussions
• Allow radical solutions (never easy, opposed to established interests
& lifestyles)
• Sustainability is never established forever
– New threats might emerge and old ones dissappear


• There is no future if this is not sustainable
• But there is not one sustainable future, there
are many!
• ‘healthy food’ vs. ‘healthy food habits’
• Such a thing as a inherently Sustainable
Technology does not exist,

34

Contents

Engineering & Sustianability
1. Problems & Paradoxes
2. Possibilities
3. Conclusions


Can we learn sustainability in
today’s engineering schools?


Can we learn football here?


SD in Eng Education (self-ranking)
[Source: EESD-Observatory]


10 years of EESD
Engineering Education in Sustainable Development
• 2002: TU Delft 1. What should engineers learn on SD?
• 2004: UPC Barcelona 2. How to trigger change?
3. How to win the hearts and souls of the
• 2006: INSA Lyon faculty?
• 2008: TU Graz 4. Starting new programs or changing
• 2010: Chalmers, Göteborg existing ones?
5. Active learning and project based
• 2012: Kiev… learning?
6. The role of external stakeholders, external
cooperation?
7. How to measure SD learning effects?
8. How to practice what we preach in the

9? 9.
campus?
How to teach normative content in an
academic context?


A good engineer would not
reinvent the wheel…


What should engineers learn on SD?
A) What the problems are
• Inter/transdisciplinarity, intercultural,
intergenerational perspectives
• Active learning

B) How to solve them.
• No Such a thing as “sustainable technology”
• Process orientation vs product orientation


How to trigger institutional change within
engineering schools: top-down or bottom-up?

Opposing views:

• Disciplinarization of knowledge + hyper rational
culture of engineering create strong barriers for
introducing change.
• Real change therefore needs to be enforced,
and depends on soft un-engineering things like
emotions, perceptions, group dynamics,
motivations, leaderships...
• Structural + cultural

• Strong coupling between bottom-up and top-
down initiatives, and that they have to be seen
as co-evolving


How to trigger cultural change - how to
win the hearts and souls of the faculty?

• From “Teach the teacher” to
“ask the teacher”
• Lecturers invited to suggest
contributions of their own
(sub-) discipline to SD


Curriculum change: starting
new programs or changing
existing ones?
• in-depth elective SD
education programs can co-
exist and are
complementary with
obligatory SD courses for all
students.
• Besides basic knowledge on
SD for every engineer
(linked to its social
responsibility), there is a
need for SD engineering
specialists.


The contribution of active learning
and project based learning?
• Doing a project in a real life setting (e.g. like
working in sustainability in a developing
nation, in an NGO network or even within
the university associations) can be a life
changing experience for a student from an
industrialized country.
• Segalas (2009, 2010 ) demonstrated that
active learning is more effective in terms of
learning interdisciplinary skills and systems
thinking.
• However, it takes more resources, needs
good contacts with external stakeholders
and motivated staff that are trained in
working in interdisciplinary groups.


How to measure SD learning effects?
• For SD, however, it is of crucial importance that
students are able to think in systems, i.e. in
connections between various elements, and in
dynamic processes (that often involve long time
frames).
• Conceptual maps were introduced as an
appropriate method for evaluating SD
understanding: they are graphic representations
for organizing and representing knowledge.


Before After

(Novak’s concept maps)

Practice what you preach: how to green the
campus, diminish resource consumption and
sustainabilise procurement?
• Coherence in the main university
functions and need to give example
• using campus greening as a real life setting for
sustainability education, applying results of the
university’s sustainability research and acting
as an exemplar to transfer innovative solutions
to society.


The role of external stakeholders,
external cooperation?
• Highly motivating & educative
• Relations between the university and the
external partner should be of a more
permanent character.
• Educational projects cannot guarantee results
for the commissioner and they should
understand that learning is the primary goal.
• Interfacial structures between the university
and other organisations have an important
role.
• Not all subjects are fit for an educational
project: subjects might be too political or
commercially sensitive, or there might be too
strict deadlines.


How to teach normative content in an
academic context?
• It therefore seems that SD
learning always needs to
incorporate value controversial
cases.
• Solutions should be developed in
regard to different value
systems.
• Awareness of values and value
gaps is essential, especially in
intercultural cooperation .


YES WE CAN; BUT SOME FIXING WORK IS NEEDED:

Transitions in 3D (Jansen 2003)
FRAMEWORK
Cultura
Estructura
Tecnología

LEVEL
ACTORS Optimization
Stakeholders Improvement
involved Renewal


The dimensions of change of the University Knowledge subsystem

FRAMEWORK
Sustainable
Intercultural dialogue
Transdiciplinary structures Technical University
Rational + Intuition knowledge (future vision)
Learning Organisation
(transparency, participation & accountability)

Current
Monoculture
Disciplinary Technical University
Rational-centered (present situation)
Peer-review
Closed & endogamic Efficient technology
Academic-centerd Education about sustainability

Stakeholders Participation
Sustainable technology
Science-society interfaces
Sustainable education
Extended peer-review

ACTORS LEVEL


Resources: books


Resources: special issues


Conclusions


Envision
Start from the question:

what should be the role of engineers in the
required sustainability transitions?


Start from your
roots
Avoid adding-on in a
crowded curricula,

Rebuild it by taking the
contribution of a field
of expertise to SD as
the leading principle
for curricula


Experience
Base SD learning on
open, uncertain, transdisciplinary
and intercultural problems.

Start using campus as a lab!
Connect students to the needs
of your neighbouring
communities and go beyond,
There is room for all:
we are all unsustainable!!!


Reinvent
SD as a societal
learning process
universities should
relearn to be learning
organisations
themselves and be
able to transcend the
rigid disciplinary
fences.


Engineers & Sustainability ?
A critical question for the engineering
community,
but also to society at large as we are convinced
that committed and engaged engineers are
crucial for our common future.


“A whole new way of thinking is needed
in order to solve the problems we have
created with the old way of thinking'”


Engineers & sustainability. Problems, Paradoxes and Possibilities

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