A review of emergy theory, its application and latest developments

The ability to assess energy, matter and information in equal terms makes the emergy analysis an attractive tool to perform sustainability evaluation of all sorts of systems. In recent years, emergy analysis has been applied to assess emergy performance of buildings, industrial processes, urban areas and countries. Emergy is a relatively new concept so its acceptance within and outside the academic world still faces several challenges and criticism. Over the years, researchers have been working to prove EmA׳s validity: EmA has been combined with other methodologies or techniques scientifically more consolidated – life cycle assessment, ecological footprint, geographical information systems and strategic environmental assessment; emergy researchers also tried to overcome criticism by clarifying emergy algebra specificities and the relationship between emergy and exergy; different approaches were also used to perform uncertainty analysis on EmA. Despite those efforts, EmA is not as scientifically and technically consolidated as emergy researchers wanted it to be. More research should be done to improve EmA as a management tool by taking into account recent improvements made ​​to the methodology and making it usable at a strategic and/or operational level within an organization.