Indicators for assessing sustainability of power plants: environmental, social, economic and technical aspects

Abstract

The public is increasingly aware of the problems caused by unbridled development. More and more, governments, companies and other organisations are establishing sustainable development policies for making more likely that future generations can satisfy their own needs. A set of environmental, social, economic and technical-functional indicators are proposed and described here. These indicators are useful to create complete models for assessing the global sustainability of renewable and non-renewable power plants throughout their life cycles. This set of indicators can be useful for engineers, researchers and, in general, decision makers in the energy policy field. This is the first step to achieve more sustainable energy mixes.