"For 40 years now, students at Technische Universität Berlin have been shaping their own learning through self-organized “project labs”. These interdisciplinary formats link academic knowledge with real-world sustainability challenges and foster skills essential for future professionals in the energy sector and beyond. By combining student agency with innovative didactics, project labs have become a pioneering model of Education for Sustainable Development. This article explains how this didactic concept works, why it can be considered a best practice example for the education of future professionals, and which conditions enable its successful transfer to other universities."