Klaus-Dieter Fröhner

Some considerations on evaluating and structuring environmental issues for sustainable energy production

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Abstract

Environmental issues were for a long time questions that could not easily be addressed publicly. Thereafter, environmental issues were frequently turned into topics, very often fostering solid research. Rapid advancement brought global dimensions into focus of the issues. This ended up assuming environmental issues being central elements for industrial design and development. By looking at it in a systematic way, environmental issues were in a first phase characterizing problems, in a second phase marking repair activities, and in a third phase restricting design to overcome the problems on an elaborated level. The attempts to set-up global standards for design ended up a bit illusory, because when it comes up to design a lot of different fields, sciences, and settings are involved, seen from the point of mechanical engineering science having tens of years of practice to set-up design for real world problems. This leads to scrutiny of evaluating and designing environmental issues to improve the set-up and the orientation of projects. From the start it has to be stated that it cannot be overcome that an analytical approach for the handling of environmental issues has to take into consideration that reality is different and complex. By this approach complex processes can be qualified to give them a lay-out not only for understanding. Structuring has to start beginning with the core environmental process. The process orientation in a complex environment has to be supported by rational reasoning and referring. The examination gives a first outline to handle problems related with sustainable energy production in a small country, making evaluation of processes more comparative and reliable.

Keywords: Evaluation; structuring; process chain; sub processes; sustainable energy production.