Climate change: understanding the causes and solutions

Part 1: The science base of climate change: facts and figures
In the first two weeks the course will focus on establishing a firm knowledge base on climate science, greenhouse gas emission sources and different framings of climate change and its solutions. The setup is a mixture of traditional lectures and meetings in which we discuss and apply the learning material. Students will be encouraged to go through the subject matter in advance of the lectures. Each session starts from a central question. Part 1 is concluded with a multiple choice test.

Part 2: designing technology portfolios in a socio-economic context
In weeks three and four students work in multi-disciplinary teams to design a zero CO2-emissions scenario for the Netherlands (or another country) using the Energy Transition Model (ETM). ETM is a scenario model designed for education purposes. Users can build their own energy- and CO2-scenario’s with the help of a very users friendly interface. The central part of the model is a large set of technological measures (e.g. energy savings, renewable energy, etc.) across five economic sectors.

Part 3: Policy and societal responses to climate change
In weeks five and six the setup is again a mixture of traditional lectures and meetings in which we discuss and apply the learning material. Students will be encouraged to go through the subject matter in advance of the lectures. Each session starts from a central question. Part 3 is concluded with a multiple choice test.

Part 4: designing climate solutions: challenge based case study
In part 4 of the course (weeks seven and eight) students work on a real life challenge. The cases study(s) are complex in the sense that the implementation of the climate solution may require the involvement of multiple stakeholders, with different ‘frames’ and includes non-technical implementation barriers. Students are challenged to design a strategy that copes with these multiple factors. We aim at having the client in the classroom, to introduce the case and to help in grading the final results.

The central question of this course is: how can we understand the causes of climate change, the different pathways towards climate solutions, and the system enabling those.

Learning goals
After successful completion of the course, the student:

• demonstrates knowledge and awareness of the multiple factors (technical, economic, social and political) that both cause climate change and steer pathways of implementation of climate solutions (part 1 and 3);
• is able to quantitatively construct viable technology pathways required to realize fast and deep CO2 emissions reductions on an economy-wide scale, in different socio-economic contexts (part 2);
• is able to design a strategy to speed up the implementation of a just climate solution that incorporates the multiple (socio, economic, techno) factors that affect implementation (part 4);
• can explain the need for interdisciplinarity and can contextualise the role of technology and innovation, and the role of the engineer, in addressing climate change (part 2, 3 and 4.

You must meet the following requirements

• Registered for a degree programme other than
• HBO-TOP Applied Physics, Pre-Master

• Selected papers/reports; play ‘De zaak Shell’, clips, interaction with practitioners