A model that numerically assesses the sustainability of a country, region, corporation or other entity using fuzzy logic.
Published in Chapter:
Energy Sustainability of Countries
Evangelos Grigoroudis (Technical University of Crete, Greece), Vassilis S. Kouikoglou (Technical University of Crete, Greece), and Yannis A. Phillis (Technical University of Crete, Greece)
Copyright: © 2015
|Pages: 22
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-8433-1.ch006
Abstract
The provision of adequate, reliable, and affordable energy, in conformity with social and environmental requirements is a vital part of sustainable development. Currently, countries are facing a two-fold energy challenge: on the one hand they should assure the provision of environmentally sustainable energy, while, on the other, energy services should be reliable, affordable, and socially acceptable. To evaluate such aspects of energy services one needs energy sustainability barometers, which provide the means to monitor the impacts of energy policies and assist policymakers in relevant decision making. Although sustainability is an ambiguous, complex, and polymorphous concept, all energy sustainability barometers incorporate the three major sustainability dimensions: social, economic, and environmental. In this chapter, we review three models for assessing the sustainability of energy development of countries: ESI, SAFE, and EAPI. We also present a brief discussion of the results, the applied methodologies, and the underlying assumptions of these sustainability barometers.