Sustainable development (SD) is accepted as a new paradigm of development and it:
- Represents a contemporary model and a concept within the state or local community that is concerned with improving the quality of human life;
- Implies an integrated approach to economic development, human and social promotion, and the protection and improvement of the environment;
- Encourages adaptability and creates opportunities to maintain prosperous social, economic, and ecological systems;
One of the roles of science is to provide information that would better enable the formation and selection of development policies in the complex decision-making process. Thus, science is increasingly interpreted as an essential component in finding possible pathways to sustainable development.
In the Laboratory for Thermal Engineering and Energy- VINČA Institute, the scientific research and access in the area of sustainable development represent a comprehensive analysis in the field of sustainable development and the transfer of acquired knowledge to solve problems using scientific methods towards the analysis of sustainability in the energy sector.
TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE ENERGY USE
W e do not know what kind of future awaits us, but it will certainly be dramatically different from the current state. Society is facing significant and worrying changes in available resources and, as a consequence, there will be changes in economic and social structures.
Energy, the human environment, and problems with energy sources must be linked to social and economic flows: solutions must be multi-disciplinary and must take all these aspects into consideration.
Sustainable energy sector implies a balance between production and consumption of energy and has no, or minimal, negative impact on the environment (within the limits of tolerance), but provides an opportunity for the country to use its social and economic potential.
To what extent energy resources, technology and infrastructure keep pace with new challenges related to climate change, environmental protection, increase in population growth and economic prosperity, can be established through a standardized set of metrics that is used to assess the national energy system.
As energy issues and problems are usually complex, dynamic, with elements of ambiguity and uncertainty, with opposed objectives, different types of data and information, multiple interests and perspectives of stakeholders, there is a need for including new tools to measure sustainability.
ENGAGED RESEARCHERS FACE THE FOLLOWING INVESTIGATION
- Selection, definition and quantification of sustainable development indicators (SDIs) as a tool used to analyze changes, monitor and measure sustainable development and oversee progress towards sustainable development;
- Modeling and analyzing the energy, environmental, and economic impact of various energy strategies;
- Modeling future energy transition scenarios using software tools EnergyPLAN, LEAP, MAED;
- Methods in the field of energy systems planning; Energy balance analysis; Energy consumption structures; Classification of energy carriers and energy consumption indicators;
- Development of a methodology aimed to calculate the Sustainability Index of complex energy systems introducing several criteria towards more sustainable welfare (economic, social, environmental, etc.) in order to overcome uncertainty in assessing the energy system sustainability.
- Estimation of the impact of energy consumption on the environment and climate change (primarily the analysis of the reduction or increase of greenhouse gas emissions);
TOOLS FOR MEASURING SUSTAINABILITY
ASPID (Analyse and Synthesis Parameters under Information Deficiency)
Method of multi-criteria analysis
To overcome the uncertainty that arises in the decision-making process by people, fuzzy logic can be applied as a mathematical tool for modeling various processes dominated uncertainty, ambiguity, and subjectivity. The ASPID method is based on the fuzzy sets theory and represents an integrated approach in order to overcome ambiguities in the priorities, and provides:
- Objective assessment of the weighting coefficients, since the ambiguity of the vector of the weighting coefficients is determined in the randomization process;
- Calculation of the weight coefficients on the basis of the mutual effects of certain values of the criteria (indicators) of the analyzed option under the pre-defined constraints;
- Relationships between weight coefficients of criteria in relation to different aspects of sustainable development so that priority is given to one of the criteria (indicators);
- Standardization (normalization) of the indicators so that information that may be valuable at some levels of assessment is not lost (which is the case with other methods);
- Better understanding and presentation of results from the point of view of the practical application of multi-criteria methods.
R E F E R E N C E
J o u r n a l s
[1] Naim Afgan, Maria Grazia Carvalho, Marina Jovanović*: Biomass-fired power plant: the sustainability option, International Journal of Sustainable Energy, 26(4), p.p.179-193, 2007
[2] Marina Jovanović*, Naim Afgan, Predrag Radovanović, Vladimir Stevanović: Sustainable development of Belgarde energy system, Energy, 34(5), p.p.532-39, 2009
[3] Marina Jovanović*, Naim H. Afgan, Vukman Bakić: An analytical method for the measurement of energy system sustainability in urban areas, Energy, 35, p.p. 3909-3920, 2010
[4] Marina Jovanović*, Valentina Turanjanin, Vukman Bakić, Milada Pezo, Biljana Vučićević: Sustainability estimation of energy system options that use gas and renewable resources for domestic hot water production, Energy, 36, p.p.2169-2175, 2011
[5] Biljana Vučićević*, Mladen Stojiljkovic, Naim Afgan, Valentina Turanjanin, Marina Jovanovic, Vukman Bakic: Sustainability assessment of residential buildings by non-linear Normalization procedure, Energy and Buildings, 58, p.p.348-354; 2013
[6] Biljana Vučićević, Marina Jovanović*, Naim Afgan, Valentina Turanjanin: Assessing the Sustainability of the Energy Use of Residential Buildings in Belgrade through Multi-criteria Analysis, Energy and Buildings, 69, 51–61, 2014
[7] Predrag Škobalj*, Mirjana Kijevčanin, Naim Afgan, Marina Jovanović, Valentina Turanjanin, Biljana Vučićević: Multi-criteria sustainability analysis of thermal power plant, Kolubara-A Unit 2, Energy,125, p.p.837-847, 2017
[8] Predrag Škobalj*, Mirjana Kijevčanin, Marina Jovanović, Naim Afgan, Milić Erić: Energy indicators impact in multi-criteria sustainability analyse of thermal power plant unit, Thermal Science, 21(2), pp.1143-1151, 2017
[9] Marina Jovanović*, Biljana Vučićević, Valentina Turanjanin, Ivan Lazović, Marija Živković Marija, Assessing the sustainability of Serbian school buildings by ASPID method, Thermal Science, Thermal Science, 22(4), pp:S1271-S1283, 2018
[10] Marina Jovanović*, Vukman Bakić, Biljana Vučićević, Valentina Turanjanin
Analysis of different scenarios and sustainability measurement in the district heating sector in Serbia, Thermal Science, 23(3), pp. 2085-2096, 2019
PhD T h e s i s
[1] Marina Jovanović, ‘Sustainable development of the energy system of Belgrade‘, The University of Belgrade, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Beograd, Srbija, 2009 (in serbian)
[2] Biljana Vučićević, ‘Analysis and assessment of sustainable development of the energy system in buildings‘, The University of Niš, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Niš, Srbija, 2014 (in serbian)
[3] Predrag Škobalj, ‘Multicriteria analysis of the sustainability of thermal energy blocks using the ASPID methodology’, The University of Belgrade, Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy, 2017 (in serbian)
P r o j e c t s, L e c t u r e s, R e v i e w s
[1] ”Development and application of complementary methods for assessing of energy efficiency and quality indicators of indoor residential objects in the Belgrade area” Scientific projects, referenced TR 18004A, is financed by Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Serbia, january 2008–january 2011
[2] Formation of Indicators of Sustainable Development of the Republic of Serbia. Scientific project financed by the Ministry for the Protection of Natural Resources and the Environment, Belgrade 2004
[3] Dr. Marina Jovanović, Lecture by invitation entitled: “Energy indicators of sustainable development” was presented on 05/21/2010. in Belgrade at the invitation of the Ministry of Mining and Energy of the RS as part of the implementation of the project (Project 2070413) in the Palace of Serbia in Belgrade on May 20 and 21, 2010: “Study on capacity building in the field of strategic planning in the energy sector of the Republic of Serbia”, with funds donated by the Kingdom of Norway and aimed to analyze the needs and possibilities of capacity building and adequate institutions, respecting the existing institutional organization in the field of strategic planning in the energy sector, in the Republic of Serbia
[4] Book reviews done by Dr. Marina Jovanović:
а) Quality, Sustainability and Indicators of Energy Systems by Naim Hamdia Afgan and Maria Graca Carvalho (Publisher: Begell House, New York, Conn., USA; Wallingford, UK 2008); http://thermalscience.vinca.rs/pdfs/2009-4/book-review.pdf
б) Technologies for Sustainable Urban Design and Bioregionalist Regeneration by Dora Francese (Publisher: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London and New York, USA, 2016); http://thermalscience.vinca.rs/pdfs/papers-2016/2016-6-book-review.pdf