A socio-ecological polycrisis threatens life on Earth. Learning about the current state of the world can invoke dread, understood as fear of severe futures, and hope that such futures can be avoided. This study asks how dread and hope manifest in sustainability education in engineering, and how educators and students navigate these emotions. Drawing on a theoretical framework that conceptualises emotions as socio-political, we examine educators' experiences. The empirical material consists of diary and field notes from a sustainability course offered to media technology students at a technical university in 2021, alongside meta-emotion reflections from workshops in which we, as educators and education researchers, collectively reflect on our experiences in 2024. The study shows that dread can play a constructive role in learning, serving both as a means to grasp the current situation and as a catalyst for action in the face of dark futures.

The United Nations Environment Programme design indexes for sustainable neighbourhoods, includes self-sufficiency, community plot ratio and civic generosity. The indexes are consistent with policies on European Union renewable energy communities, but their alignment has not been explored using indexes as guidelines for implementation. Furthermore, renewable energy community research is rarely explored with the actions of citizens who form them. Therefore, this research explores an emerging renewable energy community with a novel citizen centred perspective, using video interviews with fourteen citizens of a neighbourhood in Stockholm, Sweden to answer; ‘How can EU policy ambitions of renewable energy communities be aligned to citizens actions, using sustainable neighbourhood indexes: self-sufficiency, community plot ratio and civic generosity?’ We used thematic analysis to generate four main themes. The 1st theme finds that kitchens in homes represent shared spaces and can be used to enable more flexible energy community actions, such as time shifting. The 2nd theme finds that knowledge networks and neighbourhood needs can be used to engage more people in self-sufficient energy production actions together, with photovoltaics and batteries. The 3rd theme finds that without physical community plots, energy services disengage community management actions by creating artificial digital spaces, such as subscription services. The 4th theme finds that civic generosity genuinely excites citizen sharing actions of excess energy with other actors, for public services. Moreover, differences were found with how individuals interact in current energy systems and how communities might interact in future energy systems.

This paper describes a participatory pastcasting workshop designed using action-oriented design research methods in close collaboration with practitioners from Omstallningsnatverket (the Swedish Transition Network) as co-researchers. The paper deepens the theoretical understanding of how to implement pastcasting, a novel addition to futures studies methodologies aimed at societal transformation. We outline the process of designing the workshop format and insights from running the workshop in two different locations in Sweden. We propose that exploring complex problems such as climate change as if they have already been solved in an alternative, more desirable present and then imagining what we did to address them in the recent past is liberating and generative of ideas for action. We argue that this methodology is a powerful addition to other futuring techniques as it concretises urgently needed societal transformations and brings them closer to people and their communities.

The multiple unfolding crises that threaten life on Earth keep many of us awake at night and leave us at a loss about how to meaningfully respond. Much of humanity's efforts to address the crises are ultimately aimed at upholding the current unsustainable paradigm of infinite growth and exploitation of both natural resources and humans. In this paper, we offer the Two Loops model of change as a framework for understanding the interrelated crises of our times - the meta-crisis - to help us find clues for personal agency and also hope. Notably, Two Loops asks us to face the need for hospicing and grieving what is dying, reorienting computing to work to what comes after and what must be protected and saved. We work through the model's various spaces for agency, i.e. innovating, naming, connecting, nurturing, illuminating in the emergent System; and stewarding, hospicing, composting and transitioning in the dying dominant System. We suggest examples and clues as to where computing and HCI professionals' agency might lie in and between the two Systems in terms of skills, tools, practices and projects. Moving forward, we welcome a deeper, large-scale collaborative mapping of the possible contributions of our profession, to include all the different specialisms of our field in the picture of how we can be of service to liveable futures.

Energy poverty affects 550,000 homes in the Netherlands yet policy interventions to alleviate this issue are rare. Therefore, we test two energy coaching interventions in Amsterdam: a static information group (n = 67) which received energy efficient products and one energy-use report, and a smart information group (n = 50), which also had a display providing real-time feedback on energy-use. Results across both groups, show a 75% success rate for alleviating energy poverty. On average homes reduced monthly electricity consumption by 62 kWh (33%), gas by 41 m3 (42%), bills by €104 (53%) and percentage of income spent on energy from 10.1% to 5.3%.

Effectively communicating vital sustainability topics, such as personal CO2e emissions stemming from daily activities, is challenging since there is a general lack of "carbon literacy." Despite efforts, like employing data visualizations, conveying this information in engaging and memorable ways remains difficult, often resulting in rapid forgetfulness. Our demonstration presents a pedagogical approach aimed at addressing this challenge. Through the integration of surprise elements, data physicalization, and embodied learning, we have developed two interactive mediated non-digital learning experiences focusing on CO2e emissions from food and from consumption. At the core of our pedagogical approach are physical artifacts representing CO2e emissions where the weight of the artifacts directly corresponds to the CO2e emissions they represent. By employing a structured interactive pedagogical setup involving peer discussion, hands-on manipulation of the artifacts, and subsequent explanations, we have created an engaging experience that encourages long-term learning.

Today there is a wealth of data available detailing the climate impact of our actions, including the ${\rm CO}_2$CO2 emissions from academic flying. Despite this, such data is hard to engage with in the abstract, leading to little practical action. In this paper, we investigate how to support processes of collectively working through and making sense of environmental data about academic flying through data physicalisation. Drawing on the results from a series of workshops with stakeholders at our own university, in which we have designed and deployed a data physicalisation of flight data, we describe this process and discuss lessons learned with a focus on material, engagement with data and ethics.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released design indexes for sustainable neighbourhoods, including self-sufficiency, community plot ratio and civic generosity. However, they are developed from an urban planning perspective and not researched in relation to: a) the citizen perspective and b) how citizen interactions can contribute to the environment. Therefore, this research tests a novel set of indexes with an underused method of ethnographic video interviews with 14 citizens of a known sustainable neighbourhood in Stockholm, Sweden. A thematic analysis conducted on 28 h of interview data collected over a 4-week period yielded 5 main themes, from outdoor public spaces. Self-sufficiency findings suggest that citizens 1) perceive small scale self-sufficiency to be challenged by large scale structural efficiency and 2) circular actions with food waste to biogas can develop the self-sufficiency index further. Community plot ratio findings suggest that citizens 3) perceive community spaces to be accessible for all but not used by all. Civic generosity findings suggest citizens 4) perceive an imbalance between self-interests of the individual versus collective interests of the community, while 5) experienced citizens feel personally responsible to pioneer civic generosity interactions. UNEP indexes for designing neighbourhoods can define local sustainability, however, our findings support this, only if they can be acted upon by the citizens who live there.

Degrowth is a paradigm that aims to solve current ecological and social problems by prioritising well-being over wealth, which is mainly done by reducing global consumption and production. We have investigated the relation between degrowth and ICT, in an attempt to close the gap between those concepts within scientific research. This technical report is a companion to the paper produced by such project. It contains the protocols we have used for the focus groups, interviews with experts, and Reddit discussions.

[Background] While degrowth is a socio-economic paradigm still known to relatively few, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports emphasise its importance in investigating and realising pathways to sustainability. There is increasing evidence that information and communication technology (ICT) plays an important role in sustainability pathways. But research about the relationship between degrowth and ICT is yet scarce. [Aims] We aim at exploring the relationship between degrowth and ICT to identify emerging themes and research implications. [Method] We conduct an exploratory literature review to gather background knowledge and complement it with focus groups, expert interviews, and Reddit discussions to elicit knowledge, reflections, informed opinions and attitudes towards degrowth. [Results] Several themes that require careful consideration emerge in our study, such as the effect of terminology, the reliance on high-tech solutions, and trade-offs that come with decreasing the use of ICT. [Contribution] We also define the concepts degrowth of ICT and degrowth by ICT, and discuss how degrowth and ICT relate to each other. We hope our work enables further research into the role of ICT in degrowth scenarios supporting a shift to strong sustainability.

The widespread awareness and the sense of urgency and helplessness regarding the ongoing sustainability crisis (climate change, biodiversity loss etc.) can evoke feelings of grief, sorrow, despair and anxiety. Those emotions are seldom discussed in computing or in computing education. They can have detrimental effects on the well-being of students and others, and also lead to inaction. But concern can on the other hand also be a catalyst for learning. In this paper, we present results and reflections from a research and development project in our introductory course to sustainability and ICT focusing on emotions in sustainability education. We focus on "eco-anxiety" and ask: 1) How is eco-anxiety communicated by students and teachers?, 2) In what ways do students receive support to deal with eco-anxiety? and 3) What could be done to better address eco-anxiety in computing education? We here present an analysis of how we have responded to the phenomenon of eco-anxiety, what activities have been added to the course and an evaluation of these interventions. The results are based on joint reflections that have been guided by literature, a small-scale ethnographic study as well as a course evaluation. The paper will end with recommendations for other ICT4S educators on how they can start addressing eco-anxiety in their education.

AbstractIn this chapter, we posit that academics need to reduce their flying in line with the ‘Carbon Law’ if we are to attain the agreed-upon targets of the Paris agreement. This entails reducing emissions in general as well as reducing emissions from flying by at least 50 per cent every decade from 2020 and on. We present data from KTH Royal Institute of Technology regarding our flying and use two specific departments as examples. We unpack this data, using material visualisations (i.e. post-it notes and poker chips) to raise questions that are not immediately apparent when looking at top-down statistics about flying. Our material visualisations instead present data about flying patterns and habits in a format that viscerally displays the differences (‘inequalities’) that exist between and within departments. Such visualisations emphasise that reducing the frequency and the length of air trips will inevitably lead to discussions and negotiations about who gets to fly (or not), as well as discussions about exactly what constitutes ‘unnecessary’ flights. The chapter ends with a reflection about the limitations of our language and how the task of reducing carbon emission from flying necessitates a reinvention of how we think and talk about flying.

Circularity in how we handle resources and materials is a key ambition in many sustainability initiatives and policies. Yet, when it comes to the circularity of ICT, much research tends to focus on how raw materials are sourced and later recycled. E-waste has represented the fastest growing waste stream globally for years, and the vast majority is not handled appropriately. In a society where repair is possible, accessible and the normative response to the breakage of devices, this waste stream could be dramatically reduced. In this paper, we describe and discuss the results of a literature review of how repair of ICT has been approached in the proceedings of previous ICT4S conferences (2013–2020). The findings are then analysed in relation to a set of speculative future Repair Society scenarios, which were developed to inform policy recommendations. The paper contributes to the ICT4S community by: 1) identifying aspects of ICT repair that have been studied to date; 2) using the Repair Society scenarios to generate insights and reflect on gaps in the research; and 3) outlining insights and suggestions of areas that could fruitfully be explored by the ICT4S community in future research.

An increasing number of artists use Ai in their creative practices (Creative-Ai) and their works have by now become visible at prominent art venues. The research community has, on the other hand, recognized that there are sustainability concerns of using Ai technologies related to, for instance, energy consumption and the increasing size and complexity of models. These two conflicting trajectories constitute the starting point of our research. Here, we discuss insights from our currently on-going fieldwork research and outline considerations for drawing various limitations in sustainability assessment studies of Ai art. We provide ground for further, more specific sustainability assessments in the domain, as well as knowledge on the state of sustainability assessments in this domain.

Sustainable HCI (SHCI) constitutes a relatively new research field within HCI. We have identified four literature reviews of the field conducted between 2009-2014. In this paper, we present and discuss the results of a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed conference and journal articles that have been published in the field during the last ten years (2010-2019). To this end, we apply the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework to classify and discern high-level goals SHCI researchers have worked towards during this period. This paper contributes to HCI by 1) identifying Sustainable Development Goals that SHCI researchers have worked towards, 2) discerning main research trends in the field during the last decade, 3) using the SDG framework generatively to enumerate and reflect on areas that this far have not been covered by SHCI research and 4) presenting takeaways and opportunities for further research by the larger HCI community.

CO2 emissions from aviation have been predicted to increase over the coming decades. Within the academic world, flying is often perceived to be a necessary prerequisite to being a successful researcher. Many Swedish universities have ambitious climate goals, but are simultaneously among the top emitters in the public sector. Reaching stated climate goals could feasibly be met through a combination of measures, including decreased flying. One way to address the challenge is to support behavioural interventions with the help of interactive visualizations of CO2 emissions from flying. Those few examples that exist in the research literature are generally directed towards management and are less applicable to universities, given the large autonomy researchers enjoy and their discretionary control of research project funds. This paper uses a design-oriented research approach to present an analysis of the problem space at the intersection of interactive visualizations using air travel data to reduce CO2 emissions from business air travel at our own university, KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Through a number of design experiments, evaluations and investigations, we have unearthed needs, challenges and opportunities for the creation of visualization tools to support more sustainable travel practices at universities and in other knowledge-intensive organisations.

In society in general and within computing in particular, there has, and continues to be, a focus on faster, cheaper, better etc. Such perspectives clash with the fact that impeding climate change and the need for radically decreased CO2 emissions (c.f. the Paris Agreement) will have fundamental and far-reaching ramification for computing and for all other sectors of society during the coming decades. In the call for the first Computing within Limits workshop, it was stated that "A goal of this community is to impact society through the design and development of computing systems in the abundant present for use in a future of limits and/or scarcity." There have since been several contributions to Computing within Limits that have accepted the challenge of discussing and imagining what such systems as well as what "a future of limits and/or scarcity" could look like. Despite this, there is currently no consensus about what exactly such a future entails and the community can consequently only offer hazy ideas about exactly what systems we should strive to design and develop. The basic problem can be summed up as follows: we know that fundamental changes are necessary and will come, but we still struggle with envisioning what a post-growth/decarbonising society looks like and what computing systems need to be designed and developed for use in such futures, or, to support that transition. In this paper we argue that the work of imagining an actionable "future of limits" could benefit from using the "carbon law" as a starting point. The carbon law is based on work in the environmental sciences and we exemplify how it can be used to generate requirements that can guide the development of computing systems for a future of limits. While these lessons are general, we exemplify by describing a research project that aims to support the KTH Royal Institute of Technology's goal of - in line with the carbon law - radically reducing CO2 emissions from academic flying over the next decade. We give examples of how computing can aid in this task, including by presenting visualisation tools that we have developed to support the KTH carbon abatement goals. We also discuss the role of computer science in general and of Computing within Limits in particular in supporting the transition to a more sustainable (or at least a less unsustainable) future.