Sustainability assessment of energy technologies via social indicators: Results of a survey among European energy experts

Sustainability assessment of energy technologies oftentimes fails to account for social repercussions and long-term negative effects and benefits of energy systems. As part of the NEEDS¹ project, an expert-based set of social indicators was developed and verified by the European stakeholders with the objective of contributing in the development of social indicators for the assessment of societal effects of energy systems. For this purpose, scientific experts from four sample countries France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland were interviewed to assess 16 different energy systems on a specific stakeholder reviewed indicator set. The indicator set covers the four main criteria: “security and reliability of energy provision; “political stability and legitimacy”; “social and individual risks” and “quality of life”. This article will review the process of indicator development and assessment and highlight results for today's most prominent and future energy technologies and some likely to make an impact in the future. Expert judgments varied considerably between countries and energy systems, with the exception of renewable technologies, which were overall positively assessed on almost all evaluation criteria.