Science for sustainability policy requires the handling of multi-dimensional and multi-scale analyses. Integrated assessment is about generating information relevant for decision-making. This generates a divide between two scientific paradigms: (1) ‘Post-Normal Science’ acknowledges the...

The multi-scale integrated analysis of societal and ecosystem metabolism (MuSIASEM) approach makes it possible to perform a check on the feasibility and desirability of patterns of metabolism of socio-economic systems by providing a characterization at different levels and scales of: (a) the...

This article illustrates an innovative approach for the characterization and comparison of the performance of power-supply systems. The concept of ‘grammar’ forces to declare the pre-analytical decisions about: (i) semantic and formal categories used for the accounting – primary energy...

One can measure “energy quantities” – e.g. joules, BTU, quads – but only at a given scale and within a specific narrative about energy conversions at the time. Therefore, at the moment of generating aggregate indicators, the arithmetic summing of assessments of energy quantities...

This paper reports theoretical economic production work and uses electricity futures trading to illustrate its argument. The focus is relationships between time, production and tradition both in Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen's analytical representation of the production process (i.e., flow/fund...

The main purpose of this paper is to examine to what extent the widely used energy accounting schemes are useful for dealing with sustainability issues in view of Georgescu-Roegen’s production process and its implications for the evolutionary aspects of the economic process. The first part...