Sustainability and new opportunities in electronic engineering research

The energy requirements for manufacturing and recycling/disposal are important, as industries attempt to significantly reduce their carbon emissions [1]. Other resource requirements for manufacture and recycling/disposal include the availability of the raw materials (either from mining operations or recycling operations) and energy requirements for extraction, refining and the disposal of waste streams associated with the manufacture and preparation of these raw materials. All of these issues impact on the energy requirements of electronic circuit and system production. For this reason, researchers seeking to improve the quality of the human condition worldwide must not ignore these additional manufacturing requirements. This paper explores these factors and their incorporation into a total cost function which might be used in circuit and system optimisation.