Lecture 01

Course
introduction, the
climate crisis, and
civil engineering
Andrew Sonta
CIVIL-239: Engineering a sustainable
built environment
10 September 2024
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Andrew Sonta ETHOS Lab

Engineering and Technology for Human Oriented Sustainability
Tenure-Track Assistant
Professor
September 2022 – present

EPFL Fribourg Research vision

Using data, engineering,
and design to create
interventions in the built
environment that integrate
our social and
environmental goals.
Previously:
• Postdoc, Columbia
University,
Data Science Institute
• PhD, Stanford University,
Civil and Environmental Some current projects
Engineering • Occupant-centric building design and management
• Socio-environmental analysis of urban form
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Course information (also in PDF on Moodle)

• Lectures: 10:15-12:00, GC B330
• Exercises: 12:15-13:00, GC B330
• This is time for you to work on the course assignments
• Course assistants will be present
• Course assistants:
• Emilie Rausis, civil engineering master student
• Axel Cebille, civil engineering master student
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Course content
• Sustainability in the built environment
• Sustainability and energy landscape
• Engineering lens
• Approaches to sustainability in civil engineering
• Specific tools for enacting sustainability in civil engineering
• Topics
• Energy supply and demand
• Mobility and sustainability
• Materials and structures
• Natural systems
• Sustainability in the civil engineering profession
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Course assessment
• Graded exercises (20%)
• On your own time, but you may also work on these during the exercise
hour (12:15-13:00 on Tuesdays) when course assistants are present
• The work must be done individually, but you may discuss with your fellow
students
• Write down on your submission who you discussed with
• Midterm exam (30%)
• Final exam, during exam session (50%)
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Week Date Course Content Engineering knowledge and tools Due
Course introduction
1 10-Sep The climate crisis The role of the built environment in
What is sustainability? sustainability
Sustainability in civil engineering
2 17-Sep Sustainability indicators The importance of data
New economic thinking
Buildings and energy
3 24-Sep Energy demand: buildings and How design impacts energy demand; Energy Assignment 1
infrastructure and load calcs
4 1-Oct Energy supply: Renewables, the grid, Interface between the built environment and
and grid integration energy systems; time-series data analysis
Mobility and sustainability
5 8-Oct Transportation systems Link between transportation, energy, and Assignment 2
Autonomous vehicles health; systems thinking
6 15-Oct Sustainable urban design and active System dynamics
mobility
Social systems
7 22-Oct No Class - Fall Break
8 29-Oct Midterm exam Assignment 3
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Materials, structures, and life-cycle assessment
9 5-Nov Guest lecture: Embodied carbon
The phases of infrastructure life cycles
emissions and materials
10 12-Nov Life-cycle assessment Environmental LCA;
Safety factors
Natural systems and sustainability economics
11 19-Nov Guest lecture: Assigning value to Sustainability in natural systems; Assignment 4
natural systems Engineering and sustainability economics
12 26-Nov Geo-mechanics, carbon storage, Risks of geo-engineering
and geo-engineering
Sustainability in the civil engineering profession
13 3-Dec Civil engineering and the intersection Complexity in civil engineering systems; Assignment 5
of built, natural, and social systems engineering decision-making

14 10-Dec Guest lecture: Sustainable Practical issues

engineering in the industry
15 17-Dec Course wrap up
Thinking in systems
Tentative: class debate
16 XX-Jan Final Written exam
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Today’s outline
• The climate crisis
• Definitions of sustainability
• Intersections:
• Environmental, social, economic
• Human, natural, built
• Sustainability in civil engineering: overview of the topics in the
course
• Why civil and environmental engineering is uniquely concerned
with sustainability
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Our visual understanding of Earth

Landscapes City panoramas Views from airplanes

since ~start (e.g. view from Tour Eiffel) since ~1920
of civilization since ~1800-1900
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Earthrise
• Photo taken December
24, 1968, during Apollo
8 mission to the Moon
• First color picture of the
entire Earth
• Widely credited with
propelling the
environmental
movement

Image credit: NASA

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The Blue Marble

• Photo taken December
7, 1972, during Apollo 17
mission to the Moon

Image credit: NASA

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THE THIN BLUE LINE

Kármán Line: Edge of space

100km above sea level

Image credit: NASA

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A delicate balance
• The Earth’s temperature is
the result of radiative
balance
• The sun emits 3.9 x 1026 W,
and the Earth receives
~340 W/m2 on average
• The Earth emits radiation in
the infrared spectrum
• Without the greenhouse
effect, the surface of the
Earth would be –18ºC on
average, instead of the
observed 15ºC

Source: IPCC
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But Andrew, there are

natural cycles that cause
Earth’s CO2
concentrations to vary
over time. How do we
know this is an urgent
issue?
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~1900
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Unprecedented impact of human activity

• “The cyclical pattern of
temperature variations
constitutes the ice
age/interglacial cycles…
• During these cycles, changes
in CO2 concentrations (in blue)
track closely with changes in
temperature (in orange)…
• As the record shows, the
recent increase in atmospheric
CO2 concentration is
unprecedented in the past
800,000 years.”

Source: The Royal Society

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Measured in CO2e
(carboned dioxide
equivalents)

Example: Methane
is ~27x more
effective in trapping
heat compared to
carbon dioxide, so
the raw amount of
methane emitted is
~1/27 of what is
shown.
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Figure SPM.1 in IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., et al. (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY,USA, pp. 3−32, doi: 10.1017/9781009157896.001 .]
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Warming is about 2x faster in Switzerland

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Observed warming of the earth. Difference between 30-year mean values from
1881-1910 and 1991-2020. Data: GISTEMP, NASA

Source: MeteoSwiss
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Climate crisis summary

• All scientists agree that human activities and greenhouse gas
emissions (primarily CO2) are responsible for the current temperature
increases
• Climate models agree about the effects, trends, and causes of climate
change
• Global average temperatures have risen by 1.2ºC compared to the pre-
industrial average
• Current atmospheric CO2 concentrations (>420 ppm) are the highest in
800,000 years
• With current policies, expected warming will be in the range of 2.5-
2.9ºC (best case), or 3-5ºC (worst case)
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Swiss CO2 emissions

• 20% reduction in national
CO2 emissions since 1990
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Swiss CO2 emissions

• 20% reduction in national
CO2 emissions since 1990
• But there is growth (with
variability) in emissions
when trade flows are
integrated
• “Imported CO2” = ~3x CO2
produced
• Ex: 3x more air transport
than the European average
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Swiss CO2 emissions

• 20% reduction in national
CO2 emissions since 1990
• But there is growth (with
variability) in emissions
when trade flows are
integrated
• “Imported CO2” = ~3x CO2
produced
• Ex: 3x more air transport
than the European average
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Some countries
(not many) have
been able to
decouple economic
growth from both
territorial carbon
emissions and
consumption-
based carbon
emissions
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🇸🇪
Some elements from
Sweden
• Growing carbon tax
since 1991
• Increasing renewables
production
• Improving energy
efficiency
• Promoting sustainable
transportation
• Encouraging
sustainable production
and consumption
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Is it a problem?
• Let’s take a 60-million-
year perspective
compared to future
scenarios
• Middle scenario:
climate of the mid
Pliocene
• High scenario: climate
of the early Eocene (50
million years ago)

Source : IPCC AR6 WG1 Figure TS.1, 2021

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Ok, so the earth is warming, but 2º doesn’t

sound like very much!
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Impacts from climate change

• Sea level rise and coastal erosion
• Extreme weather
• Heat waves
• Fires
• Storms
• Droughts
• Agricultural impacts
• Loss of biodiversity
• Local pollution
• It is affecting the planet and the people
• Global warming, climate change, or climate crisis?
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Sea level rise 1m of sea level rise

• Due to melting ice

on land and
expanding water
• Even more impactful
with storm surges
• IPCC estimates
0.29-0.59m for a low
emissions scenario,
0.61-1.10m for a
high emissions
scenario
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Acute weather Extreme

heat
impacts
• The frequency and
strength of heat
waves, extreme Extreme
(acute) rainstorms, rain
and droughts are
all increasing

Drought

Source: IPCC
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Impacts from climate change in Switzerland

• Some very specific
impacts in alpine
regions

Source: MeteoSwiss
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A summary of CO2 emission mitigation

strategies
• Switching to renewable energies – a huge number of solar panels,
wind turbines, and batteries are required
• Reducing energy demand – e.g., in buildings, transportation
• Electrification – shifting away from fossil fuels in heating and
transportation
• Less emissions from agriculture – especially eating less meat
• Carbon capture and storage? – lots of debate here
• For first assignment: explore En-ROADS Climate Solutions
Simulator from MIT
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What is sustainability?

• We have seen the stark realities of human

activity on the climate
• How can we conceptualize solving the
problem?
• How do we consider the various systems at
play?
• Earth and environment
• Human society and our well-being
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Early definition of sustainability

• The World Commission on Environment
and Development, now known as the
Brundtland Commission, was founded
as a sub-organization of the United
Nations in 1983 and published an
influential report in 1987

Ø“Sustainable development is
development
Øthat meets the needs of the present
Øwithout compromising the ability
Øof future generations to meet their own
needs”
Gro Harlem Brundtland,
first head of the commission
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Weak and strong sustainability

• Weak sustainability • Strong sustainability:
• Claims that human and manufactured • Claims that human and manufactured
capital can replace natural capital capital are not interchangeable with
• If we degrade the natural environment, natural capital
we can make up for lost capital through • Destruction of natural capital cannot
technological innovation be reversed
• Based on the work of Robert Solow, MIT • We derive human/manufactured
economist and Nobel Prize winner, who capital from natural capital
argued that sustainability does not • It is critical to preserve our natural
required saving specific natural resources
resources

Source: UN
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The three-pillar conception of sustainability

Strong sustainability
• Three pillars:
• Environment
• Social
• Economic
• Ubiquitous definition of
“sustainability,” though the
origin has been difficult to
identify precisely

Source: Purvis, B., Mao, Y. & Robinson, D. Three pillars of

sustainability: in search of conceptual origins. Sustain Sci 14, 681–
695 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-018-0627-5
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The Planetary
Boundaries
• The framework identifies
nine processes that are
critical for maintaining the
stability and resilience of
Earth system as a
whole
• All are presently heavily
perturbed by human
activities
• 2023 update: We have
transgressed 6 of 9.
Source: Katherine Richardson et al., Earth beyond six of nine planetary
boundaries. Sci. Adv. 9, eadh2458 (2023). DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adh2458
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Planetary boundary
interactions
• Planetary boundaries can
impact each other
• Climate change and
Biosphere integrity are
central

Lade, S. J., et al. (2020). Human impacts on planetary boundaries amplified by Earth
system interactions. Nature Sustainability, 3(2), Article 2.
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The Doughnut
Model
• PBs define
the
ecological
ceiling
• Sustainable
development
goals define
social
foundations

Source: Doughnut Economics Action Lab

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The Doughnut
Model
• Current
status of
different
countries

Fanning, A. L., et al. (2021). The social shortfall and ecological overshoot of nations. Nature Sustainability, 1-16. Supplementary material.
Sustainability in civil
engineering

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What is civil
engineering at its core?

• American Society of Civil Engineers

definition: Civil engineers design,
build, and maintain the foundation
for our modern society – our
buildings, roads and bridges, drinking
water and energy systems, sea ports
and airports, and the infrastructure for
a cleaner environment, to name just a
few.
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Subdisciplines of civil engineering

Building (architectural)
engineering

Structural
engineering

Transportation and
mobility

Geotechnical
Water and energy engineering
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Why do cities grow?

“Cities magnify humanity’s
strengths”
-Edward Glaeser, Professor of
Economics, Harvard

“They spur innovation by facilitating face-

to-face interaction, they attract talent and
sharpen it through competition, they
encourage entrepreneurship, and they
allow for social and economic mobility.”
-Diana Silver, Asst. Professor of Public Health,
NYU (review of Triumph of a City in NY-Times)
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What systems
exist in cities?
Human systems

Natural systems Built systems

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Which of these
have something
to do with civil
engineering?
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Another way to
visualize
(but note data is
from 2015)
• Direct CO2
emissions from
electricity
production
~40% of total
• Cement and
steel
production
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Cement production
add heat
CO2
CaCO3 CaO
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Steel production
• Production of
steel also
involves
chemical
processes that
produce CO2

Source: Wikimedia commons

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Directly related
to civil
engineering
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Overview of
Part 1 – Course introduction, the climate crisis,
setting the scene

the topics in Part 2 – Buildings, energy demand, and energy

supply

this course
Part 3 – Mobility and sustainability

Part 4 – Materials, structures, and life-cycle

assessment

Part 5 – Natural systems and natural capital

Part 6 – Sustainability in practice (guest lecture

from industry)