Emergy analysis (emergy synthesis) is one of the methods in the sustainability assessment toolbox. In the way it is using stocks and flows of energy and matter it is similar to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), Material Flow Analysis (MFA) and Substance Flow Analysis (SFA). However, Emergy accounting also includes stocks and flows of money and information. In its mechanism of relating to a global baseline of renewable flows Emergy accounting is similar to Ecological footprints in that it is not just revealing which of two alternatives is using more or less of different stocks or flows but also comparing the use to available renewable flows on a global annual basis.
This paper address the contribution of four different aspects of Emergy analysis, to the overarching goal of sustainability from a modelling perspective.
The four different approaches of assessing sustainability identified are: 1) the Emergy Sustainability Index (ESI), 2) emergy as a normalizing measure, 3) emergy as a network measure, and 4) the pulsing paradigm.