Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design
About the Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design
Established in 2012 through a gift from the Trottier Family Foundation, the Trottier Institute for Sustainability in Engineering and Design (TISED) supports research and offers courses on sustainability in engineering and design at the Faculty of Engineering and informs and educates decision-makers and the public about sustainability issues.
TISED offers the Sustainability in Engineering and Design (Non-Thesis) (M.Eng.) which comprises a broad sustainability training in an interdisciplinary environment. The program—open to students with an undergraduate degree in engineering, urban planning, or architecture—offers advanced training in fundamental and contemporary concepts of sustainability and equips students with specific skills to understand and address critical sustainability challenges in the practice of engineering, architecture, and urban planning.
The interdisciplinary format of the program allows students to learn to integrate non-engineering disciplines and systems-based approaches, such as industrial ecology and life-cycle assessment, into their engineering and design solutions. Program graduates will understand the broad ramifications of sustainability and its interplay with engineering and design and be able to implement sustainable engineering and design solutions within the context of broader sustainability theory for their future employers in industry, government, or academia.
For more information, please see the graduate section of the Course Catalogue.
Undergraduate Courses at TISED
The following TISED courses are open to undergraduate students:
| Course | Title | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| SEAD 500 | Foundations of Sustainability for Engineering and Design. | 3 |
Foundations of Sustainability for Engineering and Design. Terms offered: Fall 2025 Perspectives and debates from different disciplines and fields on sustainability and how it may be conceptualized, operationalized and evaluated; its implications for problem formulation and policy analysis, ethical considerations and strategies of implementation related to engineering and design; the need for integrating multiple perspectives and dimensions; stakeholder perspectives. | ||
| SEAD 510 | Energy Analysis. | 4 |
Energy Analysis. Terms offered: Fall 2025 Critical analysis of the importance of energy to society, the unsustainability of the current energy system, and potential options for a sustainable energy system. Topics include: peak oil and climate change, fundamental energy metrics, traditional and alternative primary and secondary power systems, and energy storage technologies. Quantitative energy analysis is applied to a set of case studies investigating energy use, energy generation, and energy storage and transport. | ||
| SEAD 515 | Climate Change Adaptation and Engineering Infrastructure . | 3 |
Climate Change Adaptation and Engineering Infrastructure . Terms offered: Fall 2025 Climate resilience and sustainability of engineering systems such as the built environment and engineering infrastructure in the context of a changing climate, possible mitigation and adaptation strategies and associated challenges and opportunities. Review of the basic principles that underpin the science of climate change; the role of global and regional climate models in predicting the behaviour of the climate system in response to different forcing scenarios, and the use of climate model outputs in support of across scale climate-resilience of various engineering systems including infrastructure systems. | ||
| SEAD 520 | Life Cycle-Based Environmental Footprinting . | 3 |
Life Cycle-Based Environmental Footprinting . Terms offered: Fall 2025 Introduction to Life Cycle-Based Environmental Footprinting and the application of basic methods for life-cycle environmental inventory and impacts modeling. LCA theory and quantitative analysis, approaches for assessing and reducing the environmental impacts of product, process, and technology systems. System boundary and functional unit design approaches, process-based and input-output-based methods for modeling mass and energy flows in life-cycle systems. How LCA can facilitate sustainable technology innovation and deployment, behavioural and societal changes, and policies, standards and regulations. | ||
| SEAD 530 | Economics for Sustainability in Engineering and Design. | 3 |
Economics for Sustainability in Engineering and Design. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Micro and macroeconomics of sustainability, market structures, principles of substitution, market failures and externalities, monetization and pricing of externalities. Policy instruments, permits and licenses, mandates, incentives, penalties, taxation and eco-social principles, mechanism design, the principles of life cycle analyses and the circular economy. Impact of engineering on ecological and economic sustainability. | ||
| SEAD 540 | Industrial Ecology and Systems. | 3 |
Industrial Ecology and Systems. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Industrial ecology theory, concepts, normative goals and analytical methods. Material and energy flows, environmental impacts of industrial activities, systems thinking, transitioning from linear to closed loop systems, recent contributions to sustainable product systems, urban metabolism, optimized materials or energy management, development of a circular economy, new environmental policies and business models based on product or material lifecycle information. Consumer and organizational behaviour in transitioning to sustainable industrial systems. | ||
| SEAD 550 | Decision-Making for Sustainability in Engineering and Design. | 3 |
Decision-Making for Sustainability in Engineering and Design. Terms offered: Winter 2026 Role and importance of engineering decisions of environmental, social, and economic problems and the application of decision-making approaches and tools to engineering sustainability. Multi-criteria decision-making, uncertainty analysis, game theory, sustainability metrics, life cycle analysis evaluation and impact assessment methodologies, design problem formulation, stage-dependent strategies, case studies. | ||
Location
TISED
Lorne M. Trottier Building, Room 2054
3630 University Street
Montreal, QC, H3A 2B3
Email: tised@mcgill.ca
Website: mcgill.ca/tised