Evaluating energy systems through a well-being lens

Peer-reviewed paper 4-246-26

Monitoring and evaluation of any measures – regarding the economy, the energy system or energy efficiency – requires to comprehensively capture as many impacts as possible, going beyond solely monetary and energy impacts. One plausible end point for these multiple impacts is human well-being, understood as a multifaceted construct including e.g. material security, health, social connections or environmental quality. A growing body of scholarship and practical experimentation has created lists of necessary dimensions and potential indicators for countries and regions, often based on the work of Amartya Sen and others. The well-being literature is often situated in a beyond-GDP debate, with GDP being criticized for its use as a measure of progress. In complementing GDP, these indicator sets often are challenged with the question of how to weigh their many dimensions. In our paper we aim to apply well-being approaches to the energy system by developing an indicator set that may later help to compare and assess different configurations of the energy system. The goal is to go beyond standard model-based assessment of energy systems which is primarily based on costs and GHG emissions. Based on a full well-being framework, we develop a manageable list of indicators with plausible data availability to be included in energy system models. To this end, we combine a large collection of well-being indicator sets and single indicators, a summary of the relevant frameworks and an interdisciplinary review process to arrive at a first list. We then conduct a representative survey in Germany (n = 1019) to derive indicator weights, allowing for later multi-criterial optimisation within energy models. Where possible, we collect existing data for how energy system technologies impact indicators. Where not possible, we use the survey for collecting data on the public perception of how energy system technologies impact a number of well-being indicators. This paper presents the indicator list and findings from the survey on indicator weighting.