Abstract
Approaches for measuring the sustainability of energy systems or energy technologies—if they are meant to comply with the complexity and multiplicity of relationships between man, machine and nature—need to be concrete and measureable, but also abstract and not too narrow, to bridge normative settings and functional requirements as well as, to be analytic, interpretive and solution-oriented.
Keywords
- Social Cost Analysis
- Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA)
- Guardrails
- Ecological Footprint Analysis
- Sustainability Assessment
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Approaches for measuring the sustainability of energy systems or energy technologies—if they are meant to comply with the complexity and multiplicity of relationships between man, machine and nature—need
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to be concrete and measureable, but also abstract and not too narrow,
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to bridge normative settings and functional requirements as well as,
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to be analytic, interpretive and solution-oriented.
Thus, promising sustainability measurement approaches need to broker and communicate between these multidimensional and sometimes opposing topics and to become an integrative, communicative and deliberative medium. To be honest, ‘they need to square the cycle’. The five approaches discussed in this book tackle the challenge with rational procedures with regard to both theoretical idea and methodological design. They line up to produce sound and solid results. In short, they claim to ease the confusion of tongues [1]; see Sect. 1.4).
But sustainability can hardly be chosen by just adopting one of the presented approaches in the sense of a ‘sustainability automata’ (see Chap. 1) to advise society offhand if it develops sustainably. Rather, an intensive discourse is required. Besides obvious weaknesses and the insolubility of the decision-making paradoxon (Triantaphyllou/Mann [2], the presented approaches help to come closer to identify sustainable energy given that they are regarded as heuristic methods or as ‘educated guesses’ and not as the ultimate solution in identifying sustainable energy. I, however, start the concluding chapter of this book based on the thesis that the quest for a perfect sustainability assessment tool is futile and has never been devoid of normative influence. Instead of searching the best, I recommend to rather use them as ‘auxiliary tools for sustainability measurement’ reflecting the polyrational character of social decision-making. Moreover, I argue that the various approaches benefit from being applied complementary: using the approaches complementary can help
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making results more robust (e.g. when a technology is valued as sustainable by two or more approaches),
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exposing different perspectives on technologies and fostering the discourse on sustainability and
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reducing the number of technologies to be identified as sustainable and therefore produce more concrete results.
Section 8.1 starts with a brief summary. The synoptic treatment of the five different methods for sustainability measurement in Chaps. 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 (multicriteria decision analysis, social cost analysis, ecological footprint analysis, guard rails and normative-functional concept) seeks to contrast the five approaches and their diverse perspectives. The categories introduced in Chap. 1 (paradigmatic issues, temporal aspects of fairness and varying forms of illustration) and some additional information discussed in the previous chapters (theoretical perspective and origin, system boundaries and general pros and cons) are summed up and highlighted. Thereby, the rationale behind each approach can be exposed, and sensibility for their reasoning can be raised. In Sect. 8.2, I go beyond the conventional (‘monolithic’) assessment and demonstrate that a complementary use of two or more approaches can help to produce more robust and less arbitrary results. By doing this, I finally promote a ‘methodological pluralism’ for improving sustainability measurement.
8.1 ‘Monolithic’ Sustainability Assessments
The five methods ‘produce’ distinct, sometimes even opposing, results. Table 8.1 gives an overview on the central features discussed in Chaps. 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. However, they, on the one hand, can solve the inherent problem of disaggregated indicator sets—they offer integrated results—on the other hand, they come along with their own weaknesses. The central concerns frequently raised are
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Arbitrariness of choosing and weighting indicators, which are based on expert opinions (multicriteria decision analysis).
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Reduction in money and difficulties of monetarization (social costs).
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Focus on land area demand and neglect of economic and other parameters (ecological footprint).
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‘Quasi-objective’ derivation of indicators and camouflage of inherent normative aspects (guard rails).
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High level of aggregation and potential subjectivity of expert appraisals (normative-functional concept).
The multicriteria decision analysis outweighs the other methods by the number of economic, environmental and social indicators which are considered. Moreover, it produces a clear ranking of technologies by implementing transparent calculation procedures. Therefore, it can provide a good basis for decision-making and discussions within a group of stakeholders. This has made the method quite popular and supported its application to the field of (renewable) energy. In turn, it has received much more criticism than the other methods. Due to its clear heuristic character and the relevance of expert opinions, to a certain extent, it remains fragile for harsh criticism, such as ‘MCDA is arbitrary’. The results of MCDA can certainly be enhanced by using solid and representative empirical values (on weightings) reflecting a group consensus.
As the market economy is based on rational behaving individuals, it is very important to include costs into sustainability assessments, which is one of the strong sides of the social cost approach. Another plus is that the comparison in monetary terms helps to understand and compare easily. However, the conversion of environmental effects to monetary units is often seen as problematic, especially if processes in different countries (e.g. an industrial and a developing country) are to be compared since the willingness to pay method is clearly dependent on the average purchasing power of the people in that country. Furthermore, the underlying assumption that the willingness to pay method (wtp) and the willingness to accept method (wta) should be the same for the same environmental impact is questionable (e.g. Brown/Gregory [3].
The strength of footprint analysis is that the nature’s carrying capacity can be calculated and one can see how much the nature is stressed by human activities. Another advantage of footprint analysis is that the results are expressed in terms of land area which is easily understandable, also for non-academics. The weakness, on the other hand, is that it does not reflect all aspects (economic, environmental and social issues) of sustainability. With regard to energy, it mainly considers the GHG emissions, since there is no solid way to convert other emissions into land. Moreover, the conversion methods of different energy sources (like fossil fuels) to land might be seen problematic. If one would like to compare the ecological footprint of biofuels and conventional ones, the results are quite unsatisfactory for the biomass-based fuels (Holden/Hoyer [4]. This is for the fact that the approach does not take the resource depletion of fossil fuels into account since the required land for that is negligible.
The concept of global guard rails is being elaborated and promoted by the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WGBU) since 1994. Guard rails are quantitatively defined threshold levels whose exceedance would cause intolerable damage to society on a global level today or in future. Guard rails follow a naturalistic-technical approach and thereby facilitate profound limits for sustainability. In turn, the ideal of objectively deriving indicators is frequently criticized as neglecting the inherent normative aspects (‘quasi-objective’ derivation). This argument has lead to opening up the approach of guard rails and adding additional (social) aspects (e.g. guard rails on bioenergy). Global guard rails cannot (yet) take into account development and conditions on subglobal levels. For that reason, they still need a high degree of operationalization to specific cases and the local level.
The normative-functional concept (NFC) is the youngest approach of the ones presented in this book. Its strength lies in staying abreast of multifaceted and interrelated indicators (environmental, economic and social dimensions) as well as in harmonizing normative and functional reasoning. Moreover, it allows developing qualitative scenarios for possible future developments, using it as a communicative tool within stakeholder discussions and assessing policy options in order to change futures. Thus, it receives a distinct strategic and action-guiding character and can help to develop an effective and efficient transition management. But whereas principles of the inherent trade-off mechanisms are quite understandable, it suffers from the complexity and the large number of possible combinations (‘multiplication of variables’). As a result, indicators come along with rough information only (e.g. high, medium and low), and the (inevitable) application of computational models reduces traceability. An axiomatic counter-argument is that expert appraisals include subjective conclusions and bear uncertainties.
Since Brundtland Commission has reintroduced the term sustainability into the public discourse, new approaches have been developed (ecological footprint, guard rails and the normative-functional concept; see Table 8.1) as measurement and accounting systems and for political consulting. But both, existing approaches (MCDA and social cost analysis; see Table 8.1) and the new systems of sustainability measurement, to some extent, attracted criticism. This, however, initiated internal reflection processes and challenged their opinion leaders to address weaknesses and improve performance. Table 8.2 exemplarily lists important milestones for the methodological improvement in ecological footprint analysis. Similar processes are known from the other approaches as well (MCDM [5], Krewitt/Schlomann [6], WBGU [7]) and can be understood as a result of a good scientific practice and a system of ‘checks and balances’. In a few words, ‘the competition of ideas’ has fostered the continuous improvement in the approaches for an integrated sustainability assessment. They indeed became more sophisticated, but at the same time, they suffered from a reduced traceability for the same reason.
8.2 A Methodological Pluralism for Sustainability Assessments
As heuristic methods, the approaches discussed in this book are suitable to distinguish between rather sustainable and rather unsustainable energy systems or energy technologies. In the following, I will exemplarily highlight the potential of a ‘methodological pluralism’ by complementarily applying multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) and social cost analysis.
Table 8.3 shows the heating technologies introduced by Daniel Zech in Chap. 1. They are brought into a ranking according to their sustainability performance: number 1 is the best technology, number 11 does the worst, and the ones in between differ gradually. On the left, the results for multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) are presented, and on the right, we see the performance according to social cost analysis.
It becomes clear that both approaches—for some technologies—come to very distinct results: MCDA, for example, favours a wood pellet–fired boiler combined with solar thermal collectors and sees natural gas–fired condensing boilers as just barely managing to meet the requirements (MCDA—sustainability index: +0.05). In turn, geothermal heat probes, solar thermal–assisted district heating and wood pellet–fired boilers (with and without solar collectors) have highest costs according to the social cost analysis, indicating that they are less sustainable than natural gas–fired condensing boilers, for instance. Thus, whether an assessment of technologies is positive or negative is strongly dependent on the specific measurement approach.
The differing results in essence are due to two aspects:
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MCDA refers to several indicators which, as yet, could not be monetised and therefore did not enter the social cost analysis. This especially concerns the social dimension, for instance the conflict potential or burdens for local citizens.
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Social cost analysis implicitly uses a different trade-off mechanism for single (sectoral) sustainability indicators. Whereas social cost analysis refers to damage costs, the applied MCDA gives equal weight (or other quantifications defined by a group of experts) to each indicator.
By using two or more approaches complementarily, it is possible to certainly identify those technologies which are rated positive or negative by these approaches. According to the ‘four-eye principle’, the obtained results become much more robust in this manner. Figure 8.1 highlights that only wood chip–fired heating plants are rated positive by both assessment approaches (the only technology which is in top 5 of each ranking, see Table 8.3). In contrast, geothermal heat probes and solar district heating are classified as unsustainable by both approaches as they are listed at the end of both rankings. But also diverged results can be obtained and come along with benefits: they may raise awareness for detailed analyses on a case-by-case basis. Moreover, they may challenge to detect and to develop suggestions addressing the weak points of a heating system (e.g. filter technologies for pellet-fired boilers).
This book does not intend to develop a universal approach for integrated energy assessment. But it wants to contribute to a transparent and reproducible discourse on sustainability and in-depth reflections on the introduced measurement approaches. It wants to help making explicit what often stays implicit (especially with regard to the normative evaluations) and stimulate an exchange on theory and practice of sustainable energy as well as the ‘correct’ input values. The discussed approaches come along with rational procedures as well as sound and solid results, but also with their very own weaknesses. By introducing, applying and discussing a couple of integrated approaches for ‘trade-off management’, these books want to raise sensibility for limits and opportunities of sustainability assessment with regard to derivation and understanding of data (inherent methods, sources and numbers) as well as the strategic and action-guiding orientation.
References
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Jenssen, T. (2013). A Kaleidoscope of Renewable and Sustainable Energy. In: Jenssen, T. (eds) Glances at Renewable and Sustainable Energy. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5137-1_8
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