Master's Thesis: Environmental Impact of AI and Future Technologies

About the role

ABB Robotics, part of ABB's Robotics business, is inviting engineering students to carry out a master's thesis (30 ECTS) on the environmental impact of AI and future technologies. The project sits in the R&D sustainability team and reports to the R&D Global Unit Lead. It is a distance or on-site project in Västerås, running from January to June 2027, and is part of a talent pipeline rather than an active job opening.

Key responsibilities

• Develop a methodology to quantify the environmental impact (energy, water, etc.) of future technologies across the whole life cycle (training, hardware, data costs, inference/sensing)
• Study the literature on the environmental impacts of AI and future technologies
• Analyse ABB Robotics' current setup and quantify the influence of AI and future technologies with a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) using SimaPro
• Identify environmental hotspots and potential rebound effects, and evaluate different technical and environmental scenarios depending on results
• Document findings and provide recommendations for implementation

Required profile

• Engineering student in sustainability, environmental science or energy
• Fluent English in speaking and writing, as it is the corporate language
• Ability to work independently while collaborating with the team

Required skills

• Knowledge of carbon footprints and LCAs
• Experience with SimaPro
• Excel; PowerBI and VBA are interesting but not required