 Energy sustainability indicators for local energy planning: Review of current practices and derivation of a new frameworkAna Rita Neves and Vítor Leal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2010, vol. 14, issue 9, 2723-2735 Abstract: Tackling climate change is a growing concern of our society. Although action is needed at all levels of governance, local authorities play a key role in climate action. The creation of sustainable energy and climate action plans at the local level are recent trends that show increasing local commitment. During the last decade, several municipalities have started to develop plans, but surprisingly little systematic technical guidance has been provided to them. As part of an effort to develop tools to assist energy planning at the local level, this study addresses the role of indicators in energy planning. This paper aims to propose a framework of local energy sustainability indicators to be used both as an assessment and as an action-planning tool. A literature review of existing sets of sustainability indicators and the testing of the selected indicators with pilot municipalities has led to a framework composed by 18 indicators. The indicators proposed were developed by having into consideration, besides relevance, their potential use as decision criteria for identifying the most effective actions for local energy planning. The paper also investigates the presence of the proposed indicators in existing local sustainability assessment initiatives and energy and climate action plans as well as the purpose for which they were being used in the plans. The analysis of 10 local energy and climate action plans has revealed that local authorities are using indicators mostly for diagnosis purposes, paying less attention to monitoring. Using indicators as decision criteria to choose the actions to be included in the action plan is not yet a common practice. It was also found that only a small number of the indicators proposed in this paper were already considered in the action plans analysed. Keywords: Energy; sustainability; indicators; Energy; planning; Local; level (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:14:y:2010:i:9:p:2723-2735 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier |
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