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Contribution: An analysis of the extent to which sustainability is present in the syllabi, project briefs, report templates, and student final reports of the three Iberian European project semester (EPS) providers, over a five-year period. Background: EPS is a one-semester capstone project framework that adopts project-based learning and multicultural, multidisciplinary teamwork. Educating engineers for sustainable development requires fostering critical and ethical thinking and a desire for equity, solidarity and preservation of natural resources, and cultural and genetic diversity. Existing engineering capstone design programs emphasize solving real world problems, hands-on training, and soft skills, but few focus on sustainability aspects of engineering design. The three Iberian EPS providers adopt project-based learning and teamwork methodologies, promoting the development of transversal skills and addressing sustainability in a multicultural and multidisciplinary background. Intended Outcomes: To show that the three Iberian EPS providers follow these recommendations and contribute to raising students’ awareness of sustainable development. Application Design: The proposed sustainability learning assessment method collects evidence from syllabi, project briefs, report templates, and final reports to extract faculty and student perspectives. The sustainability-related terms collected were processed into word cloud format, allowing a simple and intuitive interpretation of students’ understanding of sustainability, and in co-occurrence network format, to understand if sustainability has a pervasive or confined presence within the reports. Findings: Iberian EPS faculty and students are aware of the social, economic, and environmental impact of their projects, in terms of quality of life, social responsibility, the use of resources, and environmentally friendly technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Life Cycle Impact Assessment of rooftop PV systems throughout Europe is conducted. • Their environmental impact is calculated for their whole life cycle. • Depending on the electricity mix PV's aren't environmental positive in all cases. • The energy return on energy invested ranges from 1.64 to almost 5. • The systems break even in 5 to 11 years in most European Countries. Global energy demand is constantly increasing and recent projections show that this trend is going to continue with an average increase of 1.2% up to 2040. Since the building sector has emerged as a large energy consumer, in an effort to combat this trend, governments worldwide introduced various policies. The utilization of solar energy conversion systems are at the forefront of attention as they are considered carbon dioxide neutral and can be used in order to cover both electricity and heating load demands. Thus, these systems need to be thoroughly investigated taking into consideration the variations in the solar potential and the differences that exist in the electricity mix throughout Europe both in terms of cost, as well as of emissions, in order to assess their sustainability. In the current work a complete life cycle impact assessment is conducted for typical 4 kWp photovoltaic systems throughout Europe, and their environmental impact, sustainability, energy return on energy invested and payback period are calculated. The results highlight that although residential photovoltaic systems are considered "clean" and have a relatively low environmental impact throughout their life cycle, depending on the installation location and local electricity mix this might not be the case in the coming years. The energy return on energy invested ranges from 1.64 to almost 5 depending on location, while their simple payback period is less than 11 years in most cases, and as low as 5, without any subsidy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the new energy plan of Europe which includes the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. It is said that the members of the European Union (EU) have agreed on the "2020 policy," which means 20% less carbon emitted by 2020 and 20% of all energies are coming from renewable resources at the same period. The energy plan also mandates 10% use of biofuels in the transportation sector. However, it is claimed that the new energy plan have a significant impact towards businesses, jobs and investments in Europe. Other issues concerning the "2020" policy are further discussed.