Sustainability Index to Assess the Environmental Impact of Heat Supply Systems

Abstract

A sustainable heat supply is studied by defining indicators to evaluate local heat supply systems based on renewable energies compared to fossil energy reference scenarios. Besides the energy production, the evaluation considers the heat distribution network and long-term storage. The indicators include ecological, economic, and social aspects.

A Framework to Identify and Prioritise the Key Sustainability Indicators: Assessment of Heating Systems in the Built Environment

“…The long list of collected SIs in the previous section needs to be recategorised into the TBL sustainability dimensions which is the basis of this research. The TBL model has been the model for many studies, while in many other studies presented SIs and their classification do not exactly correspond to the TBL definition of sustainability (Hehenberger-Risse et al, 2019, Yang et al, 2018, Chen et al, 2020. In such cases, indicators have to be re-categorised under one of the TBL dimensions of sustainability based on the area of their ultimate impact.…”