Lecture 1: Introduction & Sustainable Engineering Challenges Ethics and Sustainability in Eng

Introduction & Sustainable Engineering Challenges

Course Overview

• The unit aims to educate engineering students on creating and implementing sustainable solutions ethically.
• The course content is divided into three main areas:
  • Engineering Ethics and Sustainable Development
  • Resource Management Tools and Practices
  • Sustainable Technology

Unit Content

• Week 1: Sustainable engineering challenges.
• Week 2: Introduction to Engineering Ethics.
• Week 3: Climate change.
• Week 4: Sustainability assessment tools - Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA).
• Week 5: Sustainability assessment tools – Life Cycle Costing (LCC) & Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA).
• Week 7: Cleaner production and eco-efficiency.
• Week 8: Industrial Ecology.
• Week 9: Green engineering.
• Week 10: Living on One Planet, UN SDG goals.
• Week 11: Sustainable vs Renewable (focus on Energy).
• Week 12: Pathways & Climate Change.

Expected Outcomes

1. Understand and explain basic theories of engineering ethics and sustainable development.
2. Understand and explain the basic theories of Industrial and life cycle engineering and sustainable development.
3. Apply methods and tools for environmental and sustainability engineering and management from social, economic, and environmental angles.
4. Articulate the ethical duties of the Engineering profession in addressing the conflicting challenges of improving human well-being and planetary sustainability.

Lecture Sessions

• Lectures are held for 2 hours each week, on Mondays from 2 pm to 4 pm.
• The sessions include:
  • Theory (first half): Agenda, ethics, tools, and sustainable technologies.
  • Case studies (second half): Discipline-specific and real-world examples.

Assessment

• Report (40%): Includes a proposal (5%), the main report (25%), and a presentation (10%).
• Portfolio (20%): 5 ethics workshops during tutorial classes.
• Exam (40%): Covers ethics content and sustainable development.

Unit Delivery

• Lectures: Theory + Case Study from industry representatives.
• Tutorials: Workshops, problem-solving, assignment discussions.

Sustainable Engineering Challenges

• Topics include:
  • Ecosystem, energy, and material flow
  • Global challenges
  • Sustainability and sustainable development
  • Intergenerational and intragenerational equity
  • Carrying capacity, ecological footprints
  • Weak VS strong sustainability
  • Earth Summits
  • Code of ethics

Ecological Principles

• Natural systems: Solar energy, heat loss, material sinks, material sources.
• Interaction and interrelation between air, plants, animals, soil, water, and micro-organisms.

Energy & Material Flow

• Total primary production equals the total assimilation rate of the producer.
• Energy flow is one-way through the ecosystem.
• Materials circulate within the ecosystem.
• Food pyramid demonstrates energy loss, e.g., $3000 kcal/m^2/day$ to $0.15 kcal/m^2/day$, indicating a loss of entropy.

N-Cycle

• Excessive chemical use can lead to microbial imbalance.

Change in Water Table

• Deforestation and changes in land use can increase dry-land salinity.
• The rate of groundwater recharge changes, affecting salinity levels.

Global Perspective

• Climate change impacts, including rising temperatures and extreme weather events.
• Bushfire conditions are more dangerous, increasing risk to people and property.
• Hot, dry conditions exacerbate bushfires.
• Annual stream flows into Perth’s dams are affected by climate change.

Systems

• A system is “A set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network; a complex whole”.
• Systems consist of inputs, outputs, and processes.
• Systems are nested and illustrate relationships and act upon sources and sinks.
• Systems thinking is multi and inter-disciplinary.
• Sustainability can be approached as a systems problem.

Actions for Sustainability

• Reduce energy and resource consumption.
• Reduce waste energy and resource generation.
• Reuse waste energy and resources, i.e., recycling.

Sustainability & Sustainable Development

• Sustainability is the goal; sustainable development is the process.
• “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” (Brundtland, 1987)

Emergence of Sustainable Development

• Intergenerational equity: Allocating sufficient resources to future generations.
• Intra-generational equity: Allocating sufficient resources to the poor and powerless of the present generation.
• Beyond the Brundtland report: “Sustainable development is development that protects and enhances the environment and social equity” (Diesendorf, 2001).

Ecological Footprint

• A community’s ecological footprint is the total resource area of land in a given ecosystem required to support the community’s needs for food, water, wood, energy, and waste processing capacity.
• Example: A 200 GWh power plant requires 10 Ha land. A family consuming 0.0002 GWh per year requires $(0.0002 * 10) / 200 = 0.00001$ Ha of land.
• In 2005, the global ecological footprint was 2.1 global hectares per person.

Unsustainable Production and Consumption

• The world's population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022.
• If the global population reaches 9.6 billion by 2050, the equivalent of almost three planets could be required to sustain current lifestyles.
• Unsustainable lifestyles will need at least 2 more planet earths by 2050 for a growing population.

Carrying Capacity

• The maximum population an area can sustain indefinitely without impairing its integrity.
• Growth rate: $dN/dt = rN(K-N)/K$, where:
  • $r$ = reproductive rate
  • $N$ = Population size
  • $K$ = Carrying capacity
• J curve: lab condition only.
• Sigmoid curve = f (Technology, affluence).
• When $K = N$, the population is at carrying capacity.

Population Growth & Carrying Capacity

• In reality, population growth can overshoot and collapse.

Wall-E

• Illustrates a planet becoming uninhabitable due to waste.
• Set in 2805, Earth is a landfill that cannot sustain organic life.

Approaches to Sustainability & Sustainable Development

• Interlocking circles representing economy, society, and environment.
• Alternative symbolic diagram: nested egg, with ecology encompassing society and economy.

Weak and Strong Sustainability

Precautionary Principle