Sustainability assessment of energy systems: integrating environmental, economic and social aspects

Sustainable development of energy systems requires consideration of all three sustainability dimensions: environmental, economic and social. Current work presents a new decision-support framework for facilitating this. Taking a life cycle approach, the framework integrates the three sustainability dimensions to enable assessments at both technology and systems levels. The framework comprises scenario analysis, life cycle assessment, life cycle costing, social sustainability assessment and multi-criteria decision analysis, which are used to assess and identify the most sustainable energy options. The application of the framework is illustrated on the example of future electricity supply in Mexico. Eleven…

• RC
  Research Councils UK

  Award: EP/F001444
• CN
  Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología