Computing science students at the University of Glasgow are set to become the first in the UK to have specific material about the environmental impact of digital technologies integrated into their undergraduate curriculum.
As a new academic year begins, BSc students at the University’s School of Computing Science will be regularly taught and assessed about the sustainability implications of their chosen field of study.
Researchers estimate that, by 2040, emissions from computing alone could consume more than half of the world’s carbon budget available to limit global heating to 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. Around a quarter of further emissions come from the production of computing hardware, which is often replaced before it reaches the end of its useful lifespan.
Abandoned devices like computers and smartphones also contain complex layers of metals, plastics and chemicals, which make them difficult and expensive to recycle, compounding their ecological impact.
The School’s updated curriculum aims to help future generations of computing scientists play leading roles in reducing the 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 the specific systems that students design and develop.
Professor Wim Vanderbauwhede created and leads the School of Computing Science’s Low Carbon and Sustainable Computing Group. He and Dr Lauritz Thamsen, the School’s Sustainability Subject Adviser, led the push to integrate environmental considerations into the School’s undergraduate curriculum.
Professor Vanderbauwhede said: “Computing has transformed society in my lifetime, enabling huge advances across science and medicine and providing us with new ways to instantly communicate, collaborate and share ideas.
“However, the many advantages we enjoy today as a result have come at the cost of a major contribution to the carbon emissions causing the climate crisis. 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.”
Dr Thamsen said: “Quickly and thoroughly decarbonising all sectors, including computing, is vitally important to limit global warming and its disastrous effects. We are therefore proud to be working to give our students the understanding and skills they will need to play their part in reducing computing’s footprint when they graduate and go on to work in industry or research.
“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. We are looking forward to welcoming our new cohort of students and we hope they will be inspired to spread awareness and take action.
“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. For example, early next year we will offer an advanced course on scalable and sustainable cloud computing for the first time and there appears to be a real appetite among our students, with the course being fully booked out within a couple of hours.”
The decision to embed sustainability in the School’s curriculum follows close consultation with Glasgow students and staff and academics across the UK before a proposal was approved by the College of Science & Engineering’s Learning and Teaching Committee.
It also builds on lectures on the sustainability of computing from Prof Vanderbauwhede to students, including those on the School’s Software Engineering Graduate Apprentice Programme.
Kathleen West, a former graduate apprentice with Barclays UK, is now a PhD student at the School of Computing Science focusing on research in low-carbon and sustainable computing under Dr Thamsen’s supervision. She recently won an award at the 2024 SICSA PhD Conference for her work on carbon-aware computing.
Kathleen said: “During the third year of my graduate apprenticeship degree, I attended a lecture given by Prof Vanderbauwhede on frugal computing, which opened my eyes both to the idea of sustainable computing and the scale of the problem it is seeking to tackle. Later, when I was looking to apply for a PhD, I was keen to find an interesting research topic that stands to have an impact in the real world, and the Carbon-Conscious Computing Lab was the ideal place to find exactly that.
“I am pleased that the School of Computing Science is working to encourage students more widely to think about computing’s environmental impact, and to work towards more sustainable forms of computing. I am eager to do my part to create a real benefit for the world through my PhD research, and I hope new undergraduates will be encouraged to do so too.”
The School of Computing Science’s initiative is the latest development in the University of Glasgow’s longstanding commitment to sustainability.
In 2014, Glasgow was the first university in the UK to announce it would divest from fossil fuel investment – a commitment which was achieved last year, ahead of the 10-year timeline set by University leaders. In 2019, the University was the first in Scotland to declare a climate emergency. Earlier this year, the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh founded the Scotland Beyond Net Zero project, which aims to help the country meet – and go beyond – its ambition of achieving net zero by 2045.
The University has also pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2030 as part of its ambitious climate action plan, ‘Glasgow Green: The University of Glasgow’s response to the climate emergency’.
