روش های اندازه گیری توسعه پایدار بخش انرژی آلمان

The availability of sustainability indicators is a precondition for the conversion of the model of sustainable development into policy. Sustainability indicators define characteristics that are important for sustainable development. A single sustainability indicator defines a key issue, which characterizes a certain aspect of sustainability in the observed system. Sustainability indicator systems capture the complexity and order of the systems, and they offer new knowledge about the system that can be communicated to the general public. That is why in 2002 the German Government developed a sustainability indicator set for its sustainability strategy, including indicators for a sustainability energy system within this comprehensive strategy. The Government thereby defined a sustainable order for Germany based on the theme-based sustainability approach. The sustainability indicators thus have to measure the difference between the real and the normatively defined sustainability order: Do the individual preferences of society (households, enterprises) correspond to the sustainability order of the Government, is the implicit preference order of society congruent with the explicit order of the Government as expressed in the national sustainability strategy? The question of the measurability of sustainability is the key to the implementation of sustainable development of the energy sector. The index of sustainable development (ISUD) and the standardized sustainability index (SSEI), developed by the authors, calculate the degree to which sustainability is achieved. Both indices show whether Germany is on a sustainable energy path according to the goals set by the German Government in its strategy, but from a different perspective. The indices enable us to compare the normatively (politically) defined sustainability order of the German Government (goals) with the actual “behaviour” of German society. Both indices enable us to answer the question of whether the German energy sector is “better off” in sustainable categories. In a monitoring process, calculations of the sustainable indicators help us to understand where political action is needed.

The discussion about alternative welfare and sustainability measures started in the 1960s when Tobin and Nordhaus developed the Measure of Economic Welfare (MEW) [1] and [2]. With their pivotal paper “Is Growth Obsolete?” they also laid the foundation for the later development of sustainability indicator measures [3] and [4], ecological footprint [5] and Green Accounting [6] and [7]. This discussion took a new direction in 1992, when the 1992 UN Rio de Janeiro Conference adopted Agenda 21 [8]. Chapter 40 of Agenda 21, one of the main documents of the ’92 UN Rio de Janeiro Conference, encourages the nations to develop indicators of sustainable development to provide a solid basis “for decision-making at all levels and to contribute to a self-regulating sustainability of integrated environment and development systems [8].” For this purpose, a special UN Commission, the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), was founded to guarantee effective subsequent implementation of the 1992 Rio Conference. An important aspect of the work of the CSD is the development of indicator systems for measuring sustainable development. The Commission called upon countries, international governments and non-governmental organizations to take part in the process of developing indicator concepts according to the default of the Agenda 21 [8]. The CSD’s first indicator system was published in 1996 and consisted of 134 indicators which were assigned to the three columns of sustainability [9]. The CSD revised their approach in 2001 and 2007. The idea of the multidimensional UN sustainability concepts is a focus on the economic, social, and ecological problems which have to be addressed and solved simultaneously to ensure that development is sustainable. In these multidimensional concepts such as the UN CSD approach, a single sustainability indicator defines a key issue, which characterizes a certain aspect of sustainability in the observed system. Sustainability indicators, if developed well, capture the complexity and order of the systems and they offer knowledge about the system that can be communicated to decision makers and the general public [10]. Sustainability indicators measure the difference between the current conditions of a society and a reference situation defined as sustainable [11]. Sustainability indicator systems contain a certain number of indicators that serve to measure the functioning and the interdependence of the analysed system and they enable us to measure and evaluate the consequences of this interaction. They can be used to analyse ecological, economic and social goals in the overall system as well as in the subsystem. Whereas a great deal of research is done about pros and cons of these concepts, about the shaping of the pillars, their indicators and the adequate goals of sustainable development, quite surprisingly there is a lack of research on standardized methods to aggregate the indicators to one index. Therefore, the basic idea of our indices is to contribute to closing this research gap and to defining an aggregated index concept for the multidimensional sustainability concepts in order to also have clear measurement results such as the GDP in sustainability science. We will also demonstrate that it is necessary to explicitly define the sustainability goals and the database and, in particular, to define the calculation method.

The sustainability indicators of the German sustainability strategy and its goals are the constraints for a sustainable development of German society and the performance scores determine how successful German society is in dealing with these constraints on its further development. We have shown that a more comprehensive picture of the sustainable development of the energy sector can be drawn with the help of an analysis based on our new sustainability indexes. A two-stage procedure is necessary to design these indexes: Firstly, in a disaggregated procedure, the degree of sustainability for each indicator is determined and analysed. Secondly, the indicators are aggregated to form an overall indicator to assess how sustainably (in our case) the German energy sector as a whole has developed in relative and absolute terms. Our analysis shows that the assessment of whether German society is on a sustainable energy path depends on both the goals (constraints) set by the Government defining the sustainability objectives and the calculation method for measuring sustainability. Table 4 summarizes the findings of our analysis for the three pillars of sustainable development.The data quantifies the sustainability gap, i.e. it determines whether society is “better off” in sustainable categories, that it to say whether society fulfils the sustainability constraints, and where the normatively defined sustainability order of the Federal Government differs from the implicit sustainability order of society (preference order). However, the table also shows that the sustainability gap depends on the chosen calculation method. Different calculation methods can produce different pictures of the status of sustainability. We therefore suggest that every social institution which develops its own sustainability strategy should not only define its sustainability goals but also determine the appropriate calculation method for its strategy. This procedure will allow the public to understand how the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of sustainability goals will be measured and presented to the public. Finally, our analysis shows that the energy system can be described by measurable sustainable indicators and both indices (ISUD, SSEI) can indicate whether the energy sector is developing in a sustainable way under the constraints of the sustainability goals. The indices make clear where political action is needed and define in a transparent way the starting points for political measures. Nevertheless, we have to keep in mind that the sustainability goals are the result of a political decision-making process.