Climate change is nowadays one of the biggest challenges worldwide. Human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas. Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the earth, trapping the sun's heat and raising temperatures. The main greenhouse gases that are causing climate change come from using gasoline for driving a car or coal for heating a building. Clearing land and cutting down forests can also release carbon dioxide. Agriculture, oil and gas operations are major sources of methane emissions. Energy, industry, transport, buildings, agriculture and land use are among the main sectors causing greenhouse gases.
The deployment of mature climate technologies that avoid, reduce or capture emissions and can replace carbon-intensive incumbent technologies has accelerated significantly in the past decade. Scaling of these climate technologies is now more critical than ever as countries seek to reach climate goals of limiting global warming to well under 2°C above preindustrial levels, a goal that 196 nations committed to in the legally binding 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change. To achieve this, the world needs people who can manage innovations and deployment of climate technologies at unprecedented speed. To implement these technologies at scale, decision makers need a profound basis on how the climate technology sector is working, this includes the world of environmental and climate industries, research and science, capital investments, regulatory bodies and much more.
According to an analysis conducted by McKinsey twelve categories of climate technologies could potentially reduce as much as 90 percent of total man-made greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions. The interdependency among these technologies is very high. Therefore the Climate Technology study programme at the bbw University of Applied Sciences includes not only basic management and engineering modules, but also these twelve categories of climate technologies and a mandatory internship. In the internship the learned contnets can be applied and first practical knowledge already during the study programme aquired.
