This paper describes a decision support framework to help industrial organisations make positive investment decisions on energy performance improvement projects. It is intended as a simple and repeatable approach for energy managers to promote informed, unbiased energy-related decision-making from top management. The framework is underpinned by a project prioritisation tool that uses economic, environmental, social and technical criteria. This tool is a hybrid multicriteria decision method that combines Analytical Hierarchy Process, Fuzzy Logic and Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution. The proposed methodology is applied in a case study concerning five energy projects in a Fortune 500 manufacturing corporation in the life sciences industry. Results show the application of this decision support framework resulted in increased funding for energy projects within this large organisation.

The aim of SEEP2017 is to bring together the researches within the field of sustainable energy and environmental protection from all over the world.The contributed papers are grouped in 18 sessions in order to provide access to readers out of 300 contributions prepared by authors from 52 countries.We thank the distinguished plenary and keynote speakers and chairs who have kindly consented to participate at this conference. We are also grateful to all the authors for their papers and to all committee members.We believe that scientific results and professional debates shall not only be an incentive for development, but also for making new friendships and possible future scientific development projects. Increasing efforts and resources have been devoted to research during environmental studies, including the assessment of various harmful impacts from industrial, civic, business, transportation and other economy activities. Environmental impacts are usually quantified through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In recent years, footprints have emerged as efficient and useful indicators to use within LCA. The footprint assessment techniques has provided a set of tools enabling the evaluation of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) -including CO2, emissions and the corresponding effective flows on the world scale. From all such indicators, the energy footprint represents the area of forest that would be required to absorb the GHG emissions resulting from the energy consumption required for a certain activity, excluding the proportion absorbed by the oceans, and the area occupied by hydroelectric dams and reservoirs for hydropower.An overview of the virtual GHG flow trends in the international trade, associating the GHG and water footprints with the consumption of goods and services is performed. Several important indications have been obtained: (a) There are significant GHG gaps between producer's and consumer's emissions -US and EU have high absolute net imports GHG budget. (b) China is an exporting country and increasingly carries a load of GHG emission and virtual water export associated with consumption in the relevant importing countries. (c) International trade can reduce global environmental pressure by redirecting import to products produced with lower intensity of GHG emissions and lower water footprints, or producing them domestically.To develop self-sufficient regions based on more efficient processes by combining neighbouring countries can be a promising development. A future direction should be focused on two main areas: (1) To provide the self-sufficient regions based on more efficient processes by combining production of surrounding countries. (2) To develop the shared mechanism and market share of virtual carbon between trading partners regionally and internationally. HAKAN SERHAD SOYHAN 4 Development in energy sector, technological advancements, production and consumption amounts in the countries and environmental awareness give shape to industry of energy. When the dependency is taken into account in terms of natural...