Sustainability estimation of energy system options that use gas and renewable resources for domestic hot water production

Two possible substitutions for fossil fuel used in heat production are biomass and solar energy. This paper presents an evaluation of various energy sources for hot water production in a heating plant. The heating plant was situated in one of the largest municipalities in the city of Belgrade, Serbia. It produces and delivers domestic hot water and energy for heating to approximately 17,000 households. It is possible to use of using renewable energy instead of fossil fuel for producing the thermal energy for the supply of domestic hot water. Hence, in this paper, an evaluation of the sustainability of different energy options for obtaining thermal energy was considered: 1) from gas combustion; 2) from gas combustion and solar collection 3) from biomass combustion 4) from gas and biomass combustion, and 5) from gas and biomass combustion and solar collection. To compare the different energy systems, the method of multi-criteria analysis was utilised. This method integrates various multi-dimensional criteria and provides an efficient method of estimating the sustainability of complex systems. The obtained results were compared by the General Index of Sustainability which is a measure of the complexity of a system. A basic set of energy indicators that relate to different aspects of sustainable development was defined. In this way, the results in the assessment of sustainability of energy options do not depend on the various analysts in decision making.