Research universities like Leiden University aim to integrate research into teaching, which is believed to benefit the students’ learning experiences. Naturally, some researchers, like myself, are simultaneously teachers. Research can be integrated into teaching in various ways, and what is most appropriate will differ from course to course. My course “Sustainability Analysis in Python”, which is offered to students in the MSc Industrial Ecology and MSc Governance of Sustainability program, contributes to the study programs’ goals of enabling students to perform scientific research and to apply and improve methods, techniques, and tools in order to design science-based solutions for sustainability problems. That way, it emphasizes the research skills rather than specific knowledge from recent research. Still, the two can also be combined, and that’s what we aimed to do this year.
How can you integrate research into education?
This term, half of the students worked on an assignment related to the EU 1.5° Lifestyles project (while the other half worked on an assignment related to the BAMBOO project). For this assignment, the students worked with data from a recent scientific publication of the project by Cap et al. (2024) on “(In)Sufficiency of industrial decarbonization to reduce household carbon footprints to 1.5°C-compatible levels”. Among other tasks, the students recalculated the gaps between lifestyle carbon footprints without lifestyle change and the associated per-capita climate targets in 2030 and 2050. They also estimated how much different consumption categories contribute to the variance in the gaps.
What were the results of the course?
Here are some examples of the students’ results. In Figure 1, we see again that only a few EU countries are expected to meet the 1.5°C target in 2030 without lifestyle changes. Other students created equivalent figures for the G20 countries, with results showing a similar pattern, and in 2050, the situation looks even worse.
Figure 1: Per-capita lifestyle carbon footprints of EU countries projected to 2030 under a scenario of industrial decarbonization compared to the 1.5°C target in 2030.
The results from Figure 2 are new. In the scientific publication (Cap et al. 2024), we looked at the contribution of different consumption categories to the total lifestyle carbon footprints rather than to the variance in the gaps in lifestyle carbon footprints. We see again that direct emissions (from household use of fossil fuels for heating and cooking, as well as personal transport emissions) are the main contributor. This is followed by indirect emissions from transport along supply chains.
Figure 2: Contribution of different consumption categories to the variance in lifestyle carbon footprint gaps among G20 countries in 2050.
The students reflected on these results during their presentations. For example, they pointed out, that “the gaps highlight the challenge in both policy and lifestyle adjustments needed to align with climate targets” and that “achieving the 1.5°C target will still require ambitious efforts”. They also looked ahead. One student suggested that “identifying [the primary contributors] underscores where targeted reductions could be most impactful” and that “implementing tailored, category-specific interventions within each country will be essential”. Similarly, another student proposed that “each country should look at its internal situation and target the choices that mostly contribute to the gap. For example, investments in public transport will lower the amount of people that need to own a car.” Additionally, the importance of education in guiding citizens’ lifestyle choices was stressed, which aligns well with one of the policy recommendations of this project.
Beyond integrating recent research into an existing course, the EU 1.5° Lifestyles project also pursues other education-related activities. In some of the project’s workshops and outreach activities, a climate puzzle developed by D-mat was used as an educational game with citizens, stakeholders, and partly even school children. In addition, we are in the process of developing a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) under the leadership of Lund University that is expected to go online in early 2025.
Thank you to all students for participating in the assignment and for allowing me to use some of their figures and quotes in this blog post!
Laura Scherer, Leiden University
Source: Cap, S., de Koning, A., Tukker, A., & Scherer, L. (2024). (In)Sufficiency of industrial decarbonization to reduce household carbon footprints to 1.5°C-compatible levels. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 45, 216-227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2023.12.031
Source of figures: Created by students of the course “Sustainability Analysis in Python” at Leiden University.