QUALITY, SUSTAINABILITY AND INDICATORS OF ENERGY SYSTEMS

Authors: Naim Hamdia Afgan and Maria Graca Carvalho

Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon, Portugal

Publisher: Begell House, Inc., New York, Conn., USA; Wallingford, UK, 2008

ISBN: 130; 978-1-56700-221-8

Review by Marina Jovanović

The quality of any subject is the essential characteristic of its structure, functionality, and utilization. Quality is defined as the characteristic that constitutes the basic nature of a thing or is one of its distinguishing features. In this definition, "thing" can be expressed in abroad variety of meanings. It can be a product, agglomerated products, a simple system, a complicated system, and a complex system.

The quality of products is defined by their properties, including geometrical material, financial, adaptability, lifetime, and other attributes. It is obvious that each of the properties is defined in a specific scale with respective numerical graduation. The agglomerated products are characterized by the quality of individual products but also by characteristics of a set qualifying the differences among elements. In this book special attention is focused on the quality assessment of energy.

Sustainability concept is the essential part of the book. It has moved from nature conservation to a minimization of the effects on the health of the population, an increase in social welfare, and recently to the quest for higher resource efficiency. In moving to the issue of resource productivity, there is a discontinuity in innovation that has been overlooked by most policy makers. But real innovation is chaotic. In addition, the real challenge still lies ahead, to move from a sustainable economy to a sustainable society. Technological and societal evolution has led to high anonymous systems vulnerability. The manufacturing industry is responsible for the quality of its products, not their usefulness or disposal. Sustainable production implies a cradle-to-cradle approach used by legislators and economic actors, instead of a disposal optimization for wastes. The precautionary principle will increasingly play a role in this context.