Manish Verma

Energy Environment Ethics & Society (BE 302) Syllabus

Unit I

Energy: linkage with development, world energy scenario, fossil fuel resource estimates and duration, India’s energy scenario; Finite/ depleting energy resources, coal, oil, gas, nuclear fission, promises and present status of nuclear fusion energy; Renewable energy, solar, hydro, wind, biomass, ocean, tidal, wave and geothermal.

Unit II

Society and environment: exponential growth in population, environmentally optimum
sustainable population, pros and cons of reducing birth-rates, solar and natural capital, perpetual, renewable and exhaustible resources, free access resources and the tragedy of commons, environment problems and impact of P.A.T (Population, Affluence and Technology), environmentally beneficial and harmful technologies, interaction between environment life support systems and socio-culture system.

Unit III

Ecosystem definition, concepts, structure, realm of ecology, lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere-troposphere-stratosphere; Nonrandom high quality solar energy flow/ balance to earth, greenhouse effect, matter and nutrient recycling in ecosystems; nitrogen, oxygen, carbon and water cycles, food producers, consumers and decomposers, food chains; biodiversity, threat and conservation of biodiversity.

Unit IV

Air pollution-primary, secondary, chemical and photochemical reactions, effects of
CO, NO, CH and particulates, acid rain, global warming and Ozone depletion; monitoring and control of pollutants; noise pollution-sources and control measures; thermal-, heavy metals- and nuclear pollutions; industrial pollution from paper, pharmacy, distillery, tannery, fertilizer, food processing and small scale industries. Environment impact assessment policies and auditing, conflicting worldviews and environmentally sustainable economic growth, introduction to Design For Environment (DFE), product lifecycle assessment for environment and ISO 14000; triple bottomline of economic, environment and social performance

Unit V

Ethics and moral values, ethical situations, objectives of ethics and its study, role morality and conflicts, values, policy and Organization Culture; Non- quasi- and hardprofessionals;
preventive, personal, common and professional ethics, different ethical value criteria with discussion on the case of priority for improvement of urban (high traffic) or rural (low traffic) intersections causing equal number of fatalities, codes of ethics and their limitation; Institute of engineers code for corporate member and ACM professional-code.