Environmental Performance Evaluation Methods of Urban Energy Utilization

Abstract

With the rapid economic development, the level of energy utilization is raising quickly, which results in a series of environmental problems. Urban ecosystem, as the major consumer of energy and key point of environmental pollution control, has to carry out environmental performance evaluation in energy utilization to reconcile the economic growth with ecological preservation. This paper aims at providing an overview and a critical analysis on the environmental performance of urban energy utilization. Several methods in environmental performance evaluation of energy utilization, including energy ecological footprint, input-output analysis, fuzzy synthetic evaluation method and emergy & exergy analysis are introduced and analyzed. Based on the analysis of these studies and features of urban ecosystem, we propose several suggestions concerning how to construct a comprehensive environmental performance evaluation model in urban energy utilization, which therefore can support the sustainable economic-energy-environment development of the city with scientific and systematic decision-making.