EBS-Approved Course List

Descriptions of EBS-approved courses in each EBS thematic course area are provided below. Also provided are the semesters in which each course is typically offered. Because course offerings can vary with each academic year, EBS students are encouraged to consult the UC Berkeley online schedule of classes when planning their course registrations.

To jump to course descriptions in a particular EBS thematic course area, click on the links below.
I Tools and Methods
II. Products, Processes and Services
III. Management, Strategy, Economics and Risk
IV. Policy and Systems

Mandatory Seminar Course

Technologies for Sustainable Societies
Civil and Environmental Engineering (CIV ENG) 292A [1 unit]
Course Format: One and one-half hours of seminar/discussion per week.
Description: Exploration of selected important technologies that serve major societal needs, such as shelter, water, food, energy, and transportation, and waste management. How specific technologies or technological systems do or do not contribute to a move toward sustainability. Specific topics vary from year to year according to student and faculty interests.
(F) Horvath, Nazaroff, Agogino

I. Tools and Methods

Graduate Courses

Civil Systems and the Environment  
Civil and Environmental Engineering (CIV ENG) 268E [3 units]
Course Format: Three hours of lecture per week.
Description: Methods and tools for economic and environmental analysis of civil engineering systems. Focus on construction, transportation, and operation, and maintenance of the built infrastructure. Life-cycle planning, design, costing, financing, and environmental assessment. Industrial ecology, design for environment, pollution prevention, external costs. Models and software tools for life-cycle economic and environmental inventory, impact, and improvement analysis of civil engineering systems.
(F) Horvath

Sustainable Manufacturing
Engineering (ENG) 290C / INFO 290 [3 units]
Sustainable Design, Manufacturing and Management as exercised by the enterprise is a poorly understood idea and one that is not intuitively connected to business value or engineering practice. This course will provide the basis for understanding (1) what comprises sustainable practices in for-profit enterprises, (2) how to practice and measure continuous improvement using sustainability thinking, techniques and tools for product and manufacturing process design, and (3) the techniques for and value of effective communication of sustainability performance to internal and external audiences. Material in the course will be supplemented by speakers with diverse backgrounds in corporate sustainability, environmental consulting, and academia. Discussions of papers in the reader including case studies will be used to illustrate topics. A final class project will be required (for those registered for 3 units), with students working individually or in small groups. Cross functional groups including both engineering and MBA students are encouraged. C lass projects will apply the analysis techniques covered in this course to design and develop environmentally mindful products or processes or analyze policies that lead to environmental improvements. Interaction with industry and collection of real-world data will be encouraged.
(F) Dornfeld

Modeling Energy, Environmental, and Resource Systems
(Note: Not offered in 2009-10)
Energy & Resources Group (ENE,RES) 220 [3 units]
Description: This is a first course in optimization and decision analysis modeling, with an emphasis on applications in energy, environment, and resource management. We will use readings, lectures, problem sets to help us understand the role of modeling in exploring a variety of questions associated with energy and resources. The course is based in Excel, both the native Solver module and the more powerful add-in OptQuest that is included with the textbook. In addition, GAMS language for mathematical programming will be taught in section on a voluntary basis. Thus each student will be able to apply the skills they learn in a wide variety of potential research and work environments. At the end of the course, students will be to describe a problem that interests them from an optimization perspective, formulate the appropriate mathematical programming model to examine the problem, solve the model and interpret the results. Similarly, they will be able to formulate and solve simple decision analysis problems. This course provides the fundamental basis for more sophisticated modeling, but does not cover algorithm implementation. An understanding of linear algebra and first-semester calculus is required (Math 54 or equivalent), or consent of the instructor. The section for this class is not required – it will be used to answer questions, to review material presented in class, and to present some additional material. Grades will be based on homework, an exam and a group project, which may be programmed either in Excel or GAMS.
Instructor TBD

Transportation Sustainability
CE 256 [3 units]
Course format: Three hours of seminar per week.
This multi-disciplinary course is intended to introduce students to the fundamentals of sustainable transportation, with an emphasis on: 1) current trends, climate and energy science, and the policy context; 2) methodological and analysis techniques; 3) vehicle technology, fuels, and intelligent transportation systems (ITS) solutions (supply side); and 4) land use, public transportation, and demand management.
(F) Shaheen and Lipman

II. Products, Processes and Services

Graduate Courses

Managing the New Product Development Process
MBA290N, Mechanical Engineering (MEC ENG) 290P, School of Information (INFO) 290P [3 units]
Course Format: Three hours lectures and interactive activities per week.
Description: This course is an operationally focused course, as it aims to develop the interdisciplinary skills required for successful product development in today's competitive marketplace. Engineering, SIMS and Business students from Berkeley and students from the California College of the Arts join forces on small product development teams to step through the new product development process in detail, learning about the available tools and techniques to execute each process step along the way. Each student brings his or her own disciplinary perspective to the team effort, and must learn to synthesize that perspective with those of the other students in the group to develop a sound, marketable product. Students can expect to depart the semester understanding new product development processes as well as useful tools, techniques and organizational structures that support new product development practice. Although the course focuses on the application of these principles to new product development, they are more broadly applicable to innovation in general, as well as environmental sustainability of products, services, organizations, business strategies and governmental policies.
(F) Agogino, Beckman

Green Product Development: Design for Sustainability  
(Note: Not offered in 2009-10)
Mechanical Engineering (MEC ENG) 290H [3 units]
Course Format: Three hours of lectures and interactive activities, plus an optional discussion period per week.
Description: The focus of the course is management of innovation processes for sustainable products, from product definition to sustainable manufacturing and financial models. Using a project in which students will be asked to design and develop a product or service focused on sustainability, we will teach processes for collecting customer and user needs data, prioritizing that data, developing a product specification, sketching and building product prototypes, and interacting with the customer/community during product development. The course is intended as a very hands-on experience in the "green" product development process. We aim to have half MBA students and half Engineering students (with a few other students, such as from the I-School) in the class. The instructors will facilitate students to form mixed disciplinary teams for the development of their "green" products. Students from the California College of the Arts (CCA) will also participate on the teams through a course taught separately at CCA.
(F) Agogino, Beckman

Energy and Society
Energy and Resources Group (ENE,RES) 100 (undergraduate) or 200 (graduate) [4 units]
Course Format: Three hours of lecture and one hour of discussion per week, plus optional field trips.
Description: Energy sources, uses, and impacts: an introduction to the technology, politics, economics, and environmental effects of energy in contemporary society. Energy and well-being; energy in international perspective, origins, and character of energy crisis. Key gateway course for energy internships at several state agencies (PUC, CEC, CARB), meets DEEST course requirements. ER100 undergraduate version meets L&S technical breadth requirement.
(F) Kammen

Design for Sustainable Communities
(Note: Online schedule of classes title incorrect)
Civil and Environmental Engineering (CIV ENG) 290D [3 units]
Course Format: Three hours of lecture per week.
Description: This course provides concepts and hands-on design experience with innovative products or processes for improving sustainability of communities. The focus will be resource-constrained communities (mostly poor ones in the developing countries). Five teams of four students each will take on practical projects, with guidance from subject experts, to help mature technical/scientific innovations into useful products or processes. Lectures will introduce relevant concepts and analytical tools on a parallel track as projects are developed by the five teams. Lectures will address topics such as sustainability, relevant aspects of economics, sociology of innovation diffusion, product design principles, and walk through a few selected examples. We will also discuss readings during the lecture hours.
(SP) Gadgil

Photovoltaic Materials  
Mechanical Engineering (MEC ENG) and Energy and Resources Group (ENE,RES) C226 [3 units]
Description: This technical course focuses on the fundamentals of photovoltaic (PV) energy conversion with respect to the physical principles of operation and design of efficient semiconductor solar cell devices. Incorporating ideas from a variety of disciplines, the course aims to equip students with the concepts and analytical skills necessary to assess the utility and viability of various modern PV technologies in the context of a growing global renewable energy market. Traditional materials science and device physics are integrated with the practical issues of connectivity, cost and market analysis, and policy considerations to provide a complete picture of the engineering and development of modern PV systems. Background in solid state physics or semiconductor electronics is strongly recommended.
(F) Kammen

Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation
(Note: Not offered in 2009-10)
ERG 290-1 [3 units]
Course format: Three hours of seminar per week.
Description: The course will emphasize the consequences of climate change and actions that people can take to minimize its impacts. The course will consider specific impact scenarios and create detailed impact scenarios for a given region. It will describe response actions and evaluate their technical potential in the short- and long-term, their cost and unintended consequences.
(F) Torn

Undergraduate Courses

Introduction to Product Development
Mechanical Engineering 110 [3 units]
Course Format: Three hours lectures and interactive activities per week.
Description: The course provides project-based learning experience in innovative new product development, with a focus on mechanical engineering systems. Design concepts and techniques are introduced, and the student's design ability is developed in a design or feasibility study chosen to emphasize ingenuity and provide wide coverage of engineering topics. Relevant software will integrated into studio sessions, including solid modeling and environmental life cycle analysis. Design optimization and social, economic, and political implications are included. All product ideas will be evaluated against the "triple bottom line": economic, societal and environmental. Both individual and group oral presentations are made, and participation in a final tradeshow-type presentation is required.
(S) Agogino

Climate Change Mitigation
Civil and Environmental Engineering (CIV ENG) 107 [3 units]
Course Format: Three hours of lecture per week.
Description: Assessment of technological options for responding to the threat of climate change. Overview of climate-change science: sources, sinks, and atmospheric dynamics of greenhouse gases. Current systems for energy supply and use. Renewable energy resources, transport, storage, and transformation technologies. Technological opportunities for improving end-use energy efficiency. Recovery, sequestration, and disposal of greenhouse gases from fossil-fuel combustion. Societal context for implementing engineered responses.
(F) Nazaroff

III. Management, Strategy, Economics, and Risk

Graduate Courses

Energy, Sustainability and Business Innovation
Engineering (ENG) 298A / School of Information (INFO) 290 [2 Units]
Course Format: Two hours of lecture per week.
Description: This course is for students who are interested in developing and commercializing innovative energy technologies that can help move society toward greater sustainability with respect to environmental impact and energy independence. Currently, a wide range of technological, environmental, geopolitical, geological, regulatory, economic, and consumer demand factors are creating new opportunities for alternative energy technologies. The course will prepare students to assess commercial viability of new technologies, obtain venture capital and other funding for projects, position and market new energy solutions, identify business strategies, and develop productive relationships with partners in industry, the environmental movement, and state, local, federal, and international agencies.
(SP) Rosen, Isaacs

Health Risk Assessment, Regulation, and Policy
Public Health (PB HLTH) 220C [4 units]
Course Format: Four hours of lecture per week.
Description: This course introduces the basic scientific components of environmental and occupational health risk assessment and describes the policy context in which decisions to manage environmental health risks are made. The course presents the quantitative methods used to assess the human health risks associated with exposure to toxic chemicals, focusing on the four major components of risk assessment: hazard identification, dose-response assessment, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. Students use these tools to develop their own risk assessment for an environmental health problem. The course also provides a broad overview of occupational and environmental health regulations with consideration of how hazard, risk, cost, and benefits are considered. Current political controversies about environmental policy will be examined.
(F) Hammond, McKone

Energy and Environmental Markets
MBA 212 [3 units]
Course Format: Three hours of lecture per week.
Description: Business strategy and public policy issues in energy and environmental markets. Topics include development and effect of organized spot, futures, and derivative energy markets; political economy of regulation and deregulation; climate change and environmental policies related to energy production and use; cartels, market power and competition policy; pricing of exhaustible resources; competitiveness of alternative energy sources; and transportation and storage of energy commodities.
(SP) Borenstein, Wolfram, Bushnell

Metrics for Sustainability
MBA 292T.1 [2 units]
Course format: Mixture of lectures and case studies/projects.
Description: One key reason companies struggle with embedding sustainability is a lack of metrics. Without measurement how do you know if you are improving? Without common metrics, how can you compare your operations to those of another? This course exposes students to the complex field of corporate and product specific sustainability measures. We will explore metrics in all three legs of the sustainability stool (financial, environmental and social). We will show how important it is to dig deep into a company's own operations and its value chain to truly understand how sustainable its operations and products are.
(F) Kingsbury

Undergraduate Courses

Environmental Economics
Environmental Economics and Policy (ENVECON) 101 or (ECON) C125 [4 units]
Course Format: Three hours of lecture and one hour of discussion per week.
Prerequisites: Math 16A-16B, Environmental Economics and Policy 100, or Economics 100A or 101A.
Credit option: Students will receive no credit for 101 after taking Economics 125.
Description: Theories of externalities and public goods applied to pollution and environmental policy. Trade-off between production and environmental amenities. Assessing nonmarket value of environmental amenities. Remediation and clean-up policies. Environment and development. Biodiversity management.
(SP) Zilberman

IV. Policy and Systems

Environment and Technology from the Policy and Business Perspectives
Public Policy (PUB POL) 282P 008 [3 units]
Course Format: Three hours of lecture per week.
Description: This class introduces students to the relationship between technology and the natural environment over time. It explores past environmental policy issues, such as acid rain and ozone depletion and climate change through the lens of specific technologies that were important to both policy and business interests. It introduces some of the environmental strategies that are being used by both policy makers and business to affect technology development and adoption today.
(F) Taylor

Environmental Law & Policy
Law 271 sec. 1 [3 units]
Course Format: Three hours of lecture per week.
Description: This introductory course is designed to explore fundamental legal and policy issues in environmental law. By focusing on constitutional issues and a limited number of federal statutes - principally the Administrative Procedure Act, the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act; CERCLA (the Superfund law; the National Environmental Policy Act; and the Endangered Species Act - the course exposes students to the principal approaches to environmental law (litigation, command and control regulation, market incentives, and providing information), as well as to the challenges of setting environmental policy goals and choosing policy targets. The course is designed both for students who intend to pursue environmental studies further and for those who simply want to gain a basic understanding of this key area of public policy.
(F and SP) Farber, Infelise

Energy Regulation and the Environment
Law 270.6 [3 units]
Course Format: Three hours of lecture per week.
Description: This course introduces students to the legal, economic, and structural issues that both shape our energy practices and provide opportunities to overcome these critical problems. The course focuses primarily on the regulation and design of electricity systems and markets, since so many energy choices (the use of oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, the green alternatives such as solar, wind, and energy conservation or “demand side management) relate to the way we generate or deliver electricity, or avoid the need to do so.
(SP) Weissman

Renewable Energy and Other Alternative Fuels: Law, Policy and Promise
Law 270.7 [2 units]
Course Format: Two hours of lecture per week.
Description: Energy, particularly in the form of electric power, is basic to human welfare in the modern world. But the fuels and sources of energy that have sustained us for the last century or longer are now recognized as having limits and even tragic flaws. Particularly in light of emerging data about the catastrophic effects of climate change, alternative energy will be vital to the public welfare and national security in the future. This course explores the emerging field of renewable and alternative energy supplies. It reviews emerging local, state, and federal laws and policies that promote (and impede) such sources. The Obama Administration has promised an aggressive agenda to promote alternative energy sources, and this course will attempt to keep up with the changing face of the industry. It will also explore possible conflicts between initiatives at the federal level and those at the state and local level.
(F) Lindh

Comparative International Topics in Transportation
(Note: Not offered in 2009-10)
CY PLAN 219 [3 units]
Course Format: Three hours of lecture/discussion per week.
Description: Covers comparative planning and policy topics in urban, regional, and rural transportation that are transnational in nature. Builds policy lessons on planning for mobility, accessibility, and sustainability in different political and contextual settings. Case studies are drawn from both developed and developing countries.
(SP) Cervero

Climate Policy Design
(Note: Not offered in 2009-10)
ERG 291-1 [3 units]
Course format: Three hours of seminar per week.
Description: Covers bottom-lines and open questions in high-stakes climate policy negotiations, including international negotiations, the role of U.S. states, targets and timetables, energy technology paths, cap and trade and carbon fee schemes, emissions offsets, and other important topics related to climate policy.
(F) Hummel