Emergy view on sustainability compared to environmental science textbooks’ views on sustainability

Emergy analysis (emergy synthesis) is one of the methods in the sustainability assessment toolbox. In the way it is using stocks and flows of energy and matter it is similar to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Substance Flow Analysis (SFA). However, Emergy accounting also includes stocks and flows of money and information. In its mechanism of relating to a global baseline of renewable flows Emergy accounting is similar to Ecological footprints in that it is not just revealing which of two alternatives is using more or less of different stocks or flows but also comparing the use to available renewable flows on a global annual basis.This paper compares, from a modelling perspective, different sustainability approaches covered by Emergy analysis, with more general views on sustainability and sustainable development based on a selection of sustainability textbooks. For the areas not yet covered by emergy analysis, conceptual model approaches are suggested.The four different approaches of assessing sustainability identified were: 1) the Emergy Sustainability Index (ESI), 2) emergy as a normalizing measure, 3) emergy as a network measure, and 4) the pulsing paradigm. The general aspects from textbooks were presented as three pairs of paradigm views on sustainability: 1) Strong and weak sustainability, 2) Malthusian vs. Cornucopian view, and 3) the “funnel” vs. “cylinder” sustainability paradigm. It was found that the strong sustainability, the Malthusian view, and the “funnel” paradigm were already to a significant extent covered by the existing emergy approaches. The new suggested conceptual models included capital substitution for weak sustainability, ingenuity and innovation for the Cornucopian view, and the choice of presentation to clarify the view for the “funnel” vs. “cylinder” paradigm.