Climate Action University Diploma

Description of the 2ECTS modules

• Climate change: The objective of this module is to allow students to know the causes of climate change, the consequences as well as the different IPCC scenarios and for all the sectors of activity in which the scientists will be working, the different sources of GHG emissions in the sector and the levers to reduce these emissions.
  • Coordinator: Hélène Brogniez
• Technologies and societies: This module offers a historical understanding of the social, cultural, political and economic dynamics that have led to the current energy, climate and ecosystem challenges. By reconstructing past "environmental reflexivity" and the processes by which energy and technological orientations were given, we will question the awareness that actors had or did not have of the impact of economic development on nature, and the conflicts that have been structured around the transformation of the environment over the last two and a half centuries.
  • Coordinators: Steve Hagimont and Steve Brown
•  Biodiversity and global health: The objective is to provide the basic notions to understand the links between biodiversity and what is now called global health, including human health. It is especially about showing and explaining the different interactions between the living environment and their environment and the complexity of these interactions. The EU will take stock of what we know about the dynamics of biodiversity and the consequences of a loss of biodiversity on human health in particular, and on another aspect to explain the impacts of climate change on the functioning of ecosystems. Elements to understand what defines the planetary limits will also be provided.
  • Coordinator: Erwan Personne
• Circular economy, eco-design and digital sobriety: This module will address how limited resources and environmental impacts challenge the current linear extractive approach. In order to quantify these impacts, life cycle assessment will be introduced, while concepts from the fields of eco-design, sobriety and circular economy will allow to imagine new processes. To illustrate this, the challenges posed by digital technologies and economies will be introduced. 
  • Coordinators: Guillaume Roux and Anne-Laure Ligozat
• Governance and Social and Environmental Responsibility: Examine the changes in corporate governance in relation to environmental and social challenges. What new tools, skills and management theories are needed to evolve management and production systems to integrate Social and Environmental Responsibility (SER)? Provide a long-term perspective in the strategy of organizations (companies, communities). Clarify the possible obstacles to the implementation of such governance. Introduce notions of environmental psychology.
  • Coordinator:  Eleonore Mounoud
• Environmental Law and Public Policy: The course explores the law, policy and practice of international environmental law, examining domestic and international legal norms. It places the development of environmental law directly in the context of moral principles, as well as geopolitics, and examines how different states have adopted different approaches, including the adoption of environmental protection as a constitutional principle in France.
  • Coordinator: Pauline Abadie
• The energy transition: Understanding the technical reality of energy systems (possibilities and constraints). Introduce the central ideas around the implementation and operation of an energy chain. Contextualize the use of energy in society, with the dimensions of sobriety, access, equity and acceptability in particular. To be able to dimension energy systems.
  • Coordinators: Guillaume Roux and Aymeric Vié
• Contemporary economic issues related to the energy-climate-environment nexus: Introduction and history of economic thought; contemporary issues: imperfect competition, externalities, innovation, cyclical and structural economic policies; environmental and natural resource economics: history of environmental economic thought, natural capital, biodiversity and ecosystem services; climate economics and economic policies to mitigate climate change; energy economics and decarbonization of the economy: technical and economic issues related to the energy and ecological transition Demography.
  • Coordinator: Pascal Da Costa
• Sustainable Cities, Planning and Transportation: How to achieve carbon neutrality, human well-being and environmental preservation in housing and functions at the city scale. Systemic approach to cities as flows and stocks of energy, water, materials, goods, people, biodiversity, waste, pollutants, pandemics, data, services, jobs, economic and financial values. The main actors of the urban system: public authorities, population, private actors (designers, builders, flow operators, digital companies, etc.), internal functioning of key actors at the sub-system level, strategic governance and data.
  • Coordinators: Julie Bulteau and Didier Clouteau
• Communication and project mode: This module will put into practice two skills: fluency in speaking and argumentation in English (argumentation, rhetoric and dialectics; linguistic techniques and paralinguistics; socio-pragmatics); and project mode management (methods and tools for group work in project mode through the various stages of a project - ideation, creativity, design, prototyping, deployment, marketing, finance).
  • Coordinators: Steve Brown, Yann Leroy

Interdisciplinary projects

The topics and teams will be defined by the students during a three-day kick-off program organized as a hackathon. Topics may be initiated and funded by different partners and stakeholders (research labs, industries, SMEs, local authorities and institutions, NGOs) and will have at least one engineering aspect. They will be inspired by topics related to nature-based solutions, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), social and environmental justice goals, the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, or topics directly related to AllCAN's research areas: systemic approaches to mitigation, multi-hazard approaches to adaptation, case studies in peri-urban areas.

Projects will be conducted by groups of at least 3 students from at least two different disciplines, including engineering. The time spent by each student on the project will be 200 hours. The students and the project tutors will form a panel of experts and stakeholders who will guide and follow them in the realization of their project.

Projects will be evaluated based on their potential impact on climate and ecological transitions, both in terms of innovation and ability to scale. Students will also be encouraged to submit their projects for consideration in initiatives such as the Geneva Challenge on advancing the SDGs or other regional and national challenges.