Students at the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science will be the first in the UK to have lessons on the sustainability and environmental impact of digital technologies included in their undergraduate curriculum.

The School’s updated curriculum aims to help future generations of computing scientists play leading roles in reducing ecological harms of the digital world. It will focus on understanding and assessing the problem of emissions from computing at a global scale, with a focus on specific systems that students will design and develop.

Professor Wim Vanderbauwhede, who created and leads the School of Computing Science’s Low Carbon and Sustainable Computing Group, said: “The ever-increasing complexity of integrated circuits, and the reduction of repairability in favour of planned obsolescence, has outpaced our ability to use every generation of computers in the most energy-efficient ways.

“Rethinking our approach to education is one way to help ensure that the next generation of computing scientists, who will be increasingly greatly impacted by the effects of the climate crisis, can be equipped with tools to help them tackle it.”

Researchers predict that by 2040, emissions from computing could take up more than half of the world’s carbon budget needed to keep global warming below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

The energy demands of powering computers and data centres make up around 70% of the computing sector’s carbon emissions, while around a quarter of further emissions come from the production of computing hardware.

That hardware is often replaced before it reaches the end of its useful lifespan and contains complex layers of metals, plastics and chemicals, which make them difficult and expensive to recycle.

Dr Lauritz Thamsen, the School’s sustainability subject adviser, who led the push to integrate environmental considerations into the curriculum alongside Professor Vanderbauwhede, said: “We believe we are the first computing science department in the UK to embed this level of awareness and action in our curriculum, where students will be encouraged to consider questions of climate impact throughout their learning.

“In addition to actively preparing new sustainability-focused material for core courses of our undergraduate programmes, we are now also starting to look at advanced courses and our postgraduate teaching.”

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Earlier this year, the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh founded the Scotland Beyond Net Zero project, which aims to help the country meet its ambition of achieving net zero by 2045. 

Glasgow University has also pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions for its own institutions by 2030 as part of its climate action plan.