Master of Engineering (M.Eng., non-thesis, 45 credits) in Sustainability in Engineering and Design trains engineers, architects, and urban planners to tackle complex sustainability problems in an interdisciplinary environment.
Our program is designed to equip you with the essential concepts, skills, and tools to tackle sustainability challenges across various sectors. Whether you're looking to create more sustainable products, infrastructure, or services, you'll gain the knowledge needed to make a meaningful impact.
Explore TISED’s Master of Engineering Program – Info Session on October 22, 2025 at 5:45PM Learn more and Register
What You'll Learn:
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Core Competencies: Master sustainability concepts, systems-based problem-solving, and critical analysis techniques.
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Holistic Approach: Develop solutions using sustainability and systems-thinking strategies.
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Real-World Impact: Assess and evaluate sustainability solutions using quantitative metrics.
Why This Program?
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Develop Expertise in addressing the complexities of sustainability.
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Equip Yourself with Cutting-Edge Skills to analyze and solve real-world sustainability challenges.
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Join a Growing Industry that needs forward-thinking engineers, designers, and planners to lead the charge for a sustainable future.
Four Sustainability Streams
Stream 1: Sustainable Processes and Manufacturing
This stream focuses on sustainable industrial manufacturing, aiming to reduce energy, water, materials use, and environmental impact while improving product functionality. Students will study the impact of industrial chemicals and nanomaterials on the environment, as well as the technologies, policies, and institutions needed for sustainable solutions. Emphasis is placed on life-cycle assessments and systems-thinking, covering design, manufacturing, product use, and end-of-life phases.
Stream 2: Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency
This stream focuses on low-/no-carbon energy generation, distribution, and storage systems. Students will learn sustainable energy technology assessment and the link between energy and water resources. It covers renewable fuel production from biomass, waste, and CO2, as well as pollution control technologies to reduce environmental impacts from power generation. This stream is vital for understanding and addressing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change through advanced sustainability education.
Stream 3: Sustainable Urban Development
Urban populations are rapidly growing, especially in developing areas, creating a need to rethink urban spaces and systems. By 2050, 68% of the world’s population will live in cities, presenting opportunities for sustainable urban development. This stream teaches sustainable design and development, focusing on urban renewal, growth, and densification to reduce resource use, waste, and energy. It covers the design of residential, public, and transportation systems, integrating socio-cultural and environmental factors for a holistic approach to urban planning and architecture.
Stream 4: Sustainable Infrastructure
Critical urban infrastructures like buildings, bridges, and transportation need to minimize resource use, waste, and energy to achieve sustainability. Cities consume 75% of global energy and emit up to 76% of CO2. Common materials like steel, cement, and glass have high energy and emissions footprints. This stream focuses on developing sustainable materials, systems for resource recovery, and adapting infrastructure to climate change through better design and retrofits.
Core Courses (27 credits)
8 required courses that provide a strong foundation in sustainability issues, systems thinking, and analytical skills.
SEAD 500. Foundations of Sustainability for Engineering and Design.
Credits: 3
Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design (Faculty of Engineering)
Terms offered: Fall 2025
View offerings for
Fall 2025 in Visual Schedule Builder.
Description
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.
- (3-0-6)
- Restriction: Only open to students in the Faculty of Engineering. Students outside of the Faculty of Engineering may register with permission of the instructor.
- NOTICE: Students in the TISED Master program only may enroll in this course
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SEAD 510. Energy Analysis.
Credits: 4
Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design (Faculty of Engineering)
Terms offered: Fall 2025
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Fall 2025 in Visual Schedule Builder.
Description
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.
- (3-0-9)
- Prerequisite: Permission of instructor.
- Restrictions: Restricted to students registered in the Faculty of Engineering (including the School of Architecture and the School of Urban Planning).
- Not open to undergraduate students in Chemical Engineering.
Most students use Visual Schedule Builder (VSB) to organize their schedules. VSB helps you plan class schedules, travel time, and more.
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SEAD 520. Life Cycle-Based Environmental
Footprinting
.
Credits: 3
Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design (Faculty of Engineering)
Terms offered: Fall 2025
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Fall 2025 in Visual Schedule Builder.
Description
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.
- (3-0-6)
- Restrictions: Restricted to students registered in the Faculty of Engineering (including the School of Architecture and the School of Urban Planning).
Most students use Visual Schedule Builder (VSB) to organize their schedules. VSB helps you plan class schedules, travel time, and more.
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SEAD 530. Economics for Sustainability in Engineering and Design.
Credits: 3
Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design (Faculty of Engineering)
Terms offered: Winter 2026
View offerings for
Winter 2026 in Visual Schedule Builder.
Description
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.
- (3-0-6)
- Restriction: Only open to students in the Faculty of Engineering. Students outside of the Faculty of Engineering may register with permission of the instructor.
Most students use Visual Schedule Builder (VSB) to organize their schedules. VSB helps you plan class schedules, travel time, and more.
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SEAD 540. Industrial Ecology and Systems.
Credits: 3
Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design (Faculty of Engineering)
Terms offered: Winter 2026
View offerings for
Winter 2026 in Visual Schedule Builder.
Description
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.
- (3-0-6)
- Restriction: Only open to students in the Faculty of Engineering. Students outside of the Faculty of Engineering may register with permission of the instructor.
Most students use Visual Schedule Builder (VSB) to organize their schedules. VSB helps you plan class schedules, travel time, and more.
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SEAD 550. Decision-Making for Sustainability in Engineering and Design.
Credits: 3
Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design (Faculty of Engineering)
Terms offered: Winter 2026
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Winter 2026 in Visual Schedule Builder.
Description
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.
- (3-0-6)
- Restriction: Only open to students in the Faculty of Engineering. Students outside of the Faculty of Engineering may register with permission of the instructor.
Most students use Visual Schedule Builder (VSB) to organize their schedules. VSB helps you plan class schedules, travel time, and more.
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SEAD 660. Strategies for
Sustainability
.
Credits: 3
Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design (Graduate Studies)
Terms offered: Fall 2025
View offerings for
Fall 2025 in Visual Schedule Builder.
Description
Governance models for sustainability and their competitive market advantages, sustainability investment case studies, common misconceptions and limits of
sustainability and economic theory, structural and institutional changes for sustainability, systems theory
and managerial approaches, business risk and
competitive strategies, sustainability and financial
acumen, communicating sustainability performance metrics in business.
- Restrictions: Open to students in the Faculty of Engineering. Students outside of the Faculty of Engineering may register subject to approval by professor.
- 1. Must have completed a minimum of 9 credits from the list of core courses in the M.Eng. in Sustainability in Engineering and Design; Non-Thesis program.
Most students use Visual Schedule Builder (VSB) to organize their schedules. VSB helps you plan class schedules, travel time, and more.
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SEAD 670. Collaborative Design for Sustainability.
Credits: 5
Offered by: Trottier Inst Sust,Eng&Design (Graduate Studies)
Terms offered: Fall 2025
View offerings for
Fall 2025 in Visual Schedule Builder.
Description
Team project designing an improved product or service, as measured by a range of sustainable design and economic criteria.
- Restrictions: Open to students in the Faculty of Engineering. Students outside of the Faculty of Engineering may register subject to approval by professor.
- 1. Must have completed a minimum of 9 credits from the list of core courses in the M.Eng. in Sustainability in Engineering and Design; Non-Thesis program.
Most students use Visual Schedule Builder (VSB) to organize their schedules. VSB helps you plan class schedules, travel time, and more.
Launch Visual Schedule Builder
Complementary Courses (18 Credits):
Students will take 12 to 18 credits from courses in one or two streams. Please consult the graduate course calendar for the most current list of complementary courses.
Length of Program
The target time to complete the program is 16 months (or three academic semesters in the sequence of fall, winter and fall semesters) for all students. There will be no summer lecture courses offered, but students may undertake an optional research project course (SEAD 600 or 602)
Questions?
For any questions related to the MEng program, please contact us at grad.tised [at] mcgill.ca
