Purpose: This paper aims to deal with the skills for sustainable development in engineering courses. The main objective is to identify which competences should be developed in these courses to contribute to the resolution of conflicts related to sustainability, as well as the means used by universities for their development.Design/methodology/approach: The research is divided into two strands: a theoretical and an empirical one. Concerning the theoretical part, the webibliomining method was adopted, to select the articles that were relevant to the theme, and 22 works were selected. Regarding the empirical study, structured questionnaires were applied to 30 specialists in the field, aiming at validating the competencies found in the literature.Findings: In the literature, eight main competencies required to the engineering professional, related to sustainability, were found. The empirical study showed that some competences are considered more relevant than others by the interviewees.Practical implications: The competencies verified in the present study and the relative relevance between them found in the empirical study can contribute to the engineering courses that wish to develop the sustainable behavior of the engineers in their professional or daily life.Originality/value: The originality of the work consists in presenting to engineering students and teachers as well as professionals of the market and the government the competencies that can contribute to the formation of an engineer capable of bringing adequate solutions to the conflicts of sustainability in the twenty-first century. This paper also presents learning teaching methodologies indicated for this purpose. No other works were found with these results.

Considering the importance of ISO 50001 in sustainable development, the objective of this research is to identify the challenges found by organizations during the implementation of ISO 50001:2011, according to the literature. To address this objective, a systematic search was conducted. Scientific papers from the following international databases were used: Science Direct, Emerald Insight, Scopus, Springer, Wiley, and Taylor and Francis. Permutations of the terms “ISO 50001” and “Challenges”, “Barriers”, “Lacks”, “Gaps”, “Obstacles”, “Problems”, and “Limitations” were searched. Following this strategy, 206 documents were found. After removing book chapters, articles from proceedings, duplicate articles, and articles that did not mention any challenge related to ISO 50001, 17 articles were left. Eleven challenges were found in these articles. The most cited challenges were: “Lack of Resources-Limitations (HR, Technologies, Infrastructure, Financial, Time)”, “Difficulty to determine the energy baseline and energy performance indicators”, “Human Resources deficiencies (competences, knowledges, and abilities)”, and “Lack of management support and/or commitment”. The challenges most cited shows the need for better planning before implementation as well as a comprehensive analysis of the organization’s requirements and features. The findings of this research show that this theme is still underexplored. The results presented can contribute to future industrial policies to potentialize countries’ economies.