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Designing Sustainable ICT Systems (CS4800)

A TU Delft MSc course

Last update: 31 August 2026

This is the official repository for the TU Delft graduate elective course focused on designing sustainable information and communication (ICT) systems. The course is primarily intended for MSc students in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at TU Delft, but students from other MSc programs with a suitable background (that is, knowledge of one programming language, knowledge of basics of computer networks and computer architecture) are also welcome to enroll.

Table of Contents

Course Rationale

There is—and will continue to be—a strong societal need for sustainable ICT systems, encompassing both sustainable computation and sustainable communication. The labor market increasingly demands ICT professionals who understand the challenges of sustainability and can integrate sustainability goals into system design.

To the best of our knowledge, there are currently no other courses in the Netherlands—or internationally—that comprehensively address this topic. Offering such a course positions TU Delft as an energy-cautious university that takes sustainability into its curriculum, even in fields not traditionally associated with climate research, such as computer science.

This course brings together topics covered in other courses and examines them through the lens of sustainable design. It deepens existing subjects (e.g., green software) and introduces new ones not currently addressed in TU Delft’s computer science curriculum (e.g., sustainable electronics design).

The course provides a unique body of knowledge not found in existing MSc electives in Computer Science, Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Technology and Computer and Embedded Systems Engineering MSc programs by bridging core concepts from each into a unified course, without duplicating existing content.

To summarize, this course introduces MSc students to the principle that sustainability must be considered at all layers of ICT systems—not just in isolated domains like green software or renewable energy for data centers.

Learning Objectives

At the end of the course, the student is able to:

  1. List the methods of assessing ICT industry impact on climate.
  2. Comprehend the implications of different ICT systems design decisions on the climate.
  3. Apply techniques in ICT system design that allow to minimize the climate impacts of the developed system and know how to make ICT systems sustainable.
  4. Analyze how each ICT system design technique affects ICT system climate impacts.
  5. Create new methods of ICT system design considering sustainability as core performance metric.

Course Structure, Dates and Delivery Locations

All lectures will be given physically at TU Delft, except for guest lectures which will be given online. There will be no recorded videos of the lectures. The following list provides the structure of the course, mapped to dates, times and location of delivery.

Assessment

The course has two assessment methods:

  • Group Project: A group project where you will be applying some of the knowledge obtained during the course. The outcome of the project will be assessed by submitting a project report and a presenting the outcome of the project during a public presentation at the end of the course. The group project will evaluate whether learning objectives 3, 4 and 5 have been met by the student.
  • Written Exam: A multiple choice exam, assessing your course knowledge. It will evaluate whether learning objectives 1, 2 and 3 have been met by the student.

Grade Calculation, Repair Assignment and Resits

The final course grade $F$ is calculated as $F=0.6P+0.3E+0.1R$, where $P$ is the final grade for the project report, $E$ is the final grade for the exam and $R$ is the final grade for the project presentation. For $P$, $E$ and $R$ you must obtain a grade of at least 5.75 to pass the course (see TU Delft Assessment Framework, page 41).

  • Group Project: In case of grade $P$ for the group project being lower than 5.75 (or of certain killer criteria not being met), students will be asked to resubmit the final report to the responsible lecturer within a reasonable timeframe to be decided on by the responsible lecturer. Students that do not participate in the group project do not receive a resit opportunity and must register for the course in the next academic year to repair the grade. This is because the group project will span the whole course time and it will be unreasonable to ask the student to do a failed project in even less time than the academic quarter (see TU Delft Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Teaching and Examination Regulations 2025-2026 Page 26, Footnote 4.). When the student decides to follow the course again, there will be no penalty for doing so, i.e. grade $F$ (or sub-grades $P$, $E$, and $R$) at the next course edition will not be upper-bounded becuase of a previous years' course grade failure.

  • Written Exam: In case of grade $E$ for the final exam being lower than 5.75 or a student wants to improve the grade $E$, the course will offer a resit opportunity. For the final grade $E$, the highest of the two grades (initial exam and resit exam) will be taken. Both the final and resit exam will have the same format.

Group project

You will get to apply the knowledge you gain in this course towards designing a sustainable system of your own. To achieve this task you can choose between one of the two projects on offer.

  1. Designing a sustainable AI system
  2. Designing a benchmark to measure sustainability

Grading Scheme

To better understand the expectations on your final report, you have access to the grading scheme used to grade the reports. You can find the Excel Sheet here.

Dates and Deadlines

  • Group Project: Submission deadline for the group project report is 22 October 15:45 (i.e. the start of the lecture during which selected groups will provide their project group results).

  • Exam and Exam Resit: Exam is scheduled for 4 November at 13:30 and will take place in AE-Hall E (Building 62). The resit exam is scheduled for 20 January at 13:30 and will take place in ME-Hall H (Building 34).

This Course is Looking for Your Feedback

The course is in continuous development, so it will be updated after every iteration. We request all followers of this course to suggest changes and improvements by submitting issues. We appreciate your ideas and criticism. There is also a feedback form through which you can anonymously send feedback.

Thank you!

The Course Team

Content developers (in alphabetical order):

Contact

Have a question for the course team? Do not hesitate to contact us at our official course e-mail: CS4800-EWI@tudelft.nl

Additional Resources

Although this is the first TU Delft course to treat the sustainability of ICT systems in a comprehensive manner, others have also brought important contributions to the field. We have surveyed the existing literature and compiled a list for you to explore. It includes previously offered courses and books.

Acknowledgments

We thank SIDN Funds for supporting the development of this course through grant Educational ecosystem aimed at sustainable ICT system design. We also thank the TU Delft Computer Science department for giving the green light towards developing this course.

SIDN Fonds TU Delft

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Designing Sustainable ICT Systems

github.com/TUDSSL/dsicts

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