Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Sustainability analysis of a society based on exergy studies e a case

study of the island of Samsø (Denmark)
Søren Nors Nielsen a, *, Sven Erik Jørgensen b
a
Department of Learning and Philosophy, Aalborg University, A.C. Meyers Vænge 15, DK-2450 Copenhagen, SV, Denmark
b
University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 2, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The Danish island Samsø has since 1997 initiated a process through which the island should reach a state
Received 25 March 2014 where it would be able to supply its own energy. Such a situation was reached since 2005 e after having
Received in revised form established 21 windmills e and the island is now a net exporter of electricity to the Danish power
25 July 2014
network. At the same time the buildings in the more habituated areas were connected to 4 district
Accepted 3 August 2014
Available online 23 August 2014
heating plants which generate heat from combustion of straw in some cases combined with supple-
mentary inputs from photo thermal devices. Meanwhile, certain activities on the island, such as running
the ferries, cars, factories and heating in more distant areas are still dependent on significant input of
Keywords:
Exergy
fossil fuels. The inhabitants have recently stated a wish to move on towards being independent of fossil
Sustainability analysis fuels in 2030 and carbon neutral during the next decades. As a consequence the idea came up to develop
Exergetic life cycle assessment a method for the “sustainability analysis” of a society which would assist in governing the transitional
Work energy process in the direction of increasing sustainability. Therefore, a framework has been developed based on
Renewable resources the concept exergy that may reveal where large consumptions are taking places. Such areas are likely to
Indicators be sensible targets for action or at least increased attention. Basic methods have been developed that
allows to account for infrastructure, transfers, inputs and outputs, and consumption in terms of exergy,
and taking into account whether the exergy storages or flows can be considered to be renewable or not.
The framework has been developed for six societal sectors: the energy sector, the public sector, the
private households, the agricultural sector, the industry, commerce and trade sector and nature. Nature is
here considered an activity that provides the society with an exergy that may also be of value to our
societies, often referred to as ecosystem services.
Based on the estimated amount of infrastructure and transfers, inputs and outputs a number of
“sustainability indicators” have been developed that may be monitored over time and which may serve to
indicate whether potential measures undertaken also lead the society in the right direction. An attempt
to evaluate the potential importance of wastes has also been carried out as in organic waste could play an
important role in acquiring the amount of bio-diesel required to run the ferries in the future.
The results demonstrate that the already existing overhead in production of electricity leaves the is-
land with many options and a great opportunity to be independent of fossil fuels in near future. In fact, it
might well be that socio-economical perspectives will turn out to be the more severe obstacles in the
transition process. Adjacent to this work a carbon model has also been set up to reveal the consequence
of proposed measures and strategies to the carbon budget of the island (Jørgensen and Nielsen, 2014).
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction concern to a wide range of interested parties spanning from indi-

Ever since the appearance of the Brundtland report (BR) the
issue of sustainability and discussions on what it actually means
and what are the consequences to be taken has been of great
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: soerennorsnielsen@gmail.com (S.N. Nielsen).
vidual people, environmental organisations and NGO's to the pol-
iticians at local to global level. The great concern is not only caused
by the fact that we are all stakeholders e or at least we should be e
in the project of making our planet a sustainable place to live. We
also realize that the definition of sustainable development given in
the BR of giving future generations the same possibilities as we
have had e defining sustainable evolution of our society as a
“development that meets the needs of the present without

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.08.035
0959-6526/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs” e is insufficient when it comes to address the issue which is
really important namely as directing us towards proper action, i.e.
telling us exactly what to do.
Whereas some important resources which are essential in
driving our society today are getting closer and closer to an end
(Yellishetty et al., 2011; Boryczko et al., 2014), the direction of our
attention towards the potential future problems expected in
meeting the mentioned “demands” as imposed by the above un-
derstanding of sustainability has not increased correspondingly.
Important points such as dissipation of resources and the impor-
tance of thermodynamics to our societal constructs have been
taken up by a variety of scientific authors. Georgescu-Roegen (1971)
e although not always recognized by his fellow economists (Gowdy
and Mesner, 1998) e was one of the first to address the issue in a
manner that involved a prudent use of energy and its immediate
connotation to the incorporation of the thermodynamic principle
of entropy in our understanding of the functional principles of our
society (Cleveland and Ruth, 1997; Daly, 1992, 1995). Rifkin (1989)
introduced a similar understanding of our systems as an entropy
world in a more qualitative and popularized manner. More recently
others have suggested a thermodynamic view and understanding
as the way to improve our level of sustainability such as Ayres (e.g.
1998,1999), Ruth (1995), Dincer (2002) Bastianoni (Bastianoni et al.,
2005), Hammond (2004, 2007), Jørgensen (2006) Sciubba (2004),
Serova and Brodiansky (2004), Svirezhev (2008), Dewulf et al.
(2008), Wall (1986), and Volk and Pauluis (2010), Kümmel (2001,
2011). As thermodynamics is in general viewed as a very compli-
cated science e which in part it true e it is probably therefore that
the introduction of these views have had a hard time finding its
way into environmental management and politics. But the disci-
pline of thermodynamics also represents a world of application and
through the many examples of implementation its importance has
been demonstrated (Sciubba, 2003; Seager and Theis, 2002;
Yellishetty et al., 2011; Benhelal et al., 2012; Liu and Müller, 2012)
and it has become increasingly popular within the engineering
sciences (Cornelissen and Hirs, 2002; Hirs, 2003; Sciubba and Wall,
2007). Although difficult to outsiders it is likely that the increasing
number of examples e together with the many useful metaphors
which can be derived from the science e will contribute to inte-
grate this discipline firmly in our ways of dealing with the envi-
ronmental problems, problems which we ourselves and our society
are causing into the practice of environmental management and
even legislation.
Such an integration of the many methodologies developed
(Finnveden and Moberg, 2005) and the need for a merger of ana-
lyses of both energetic, material flows (Baccini and Brunner, 2012)
and economics (Amundsen, 2000; Seager and Theis, 2002; Ayres
et al., 2003; Svensson et al., 2006; Warr and Ayres, 2010; Alroth
and Finnveden, 2011; Fiorito, 2013) should receive more attention
and have a high priority in order to formulate the proper strategies
to reach a sustainable society (Korhonen, 2004; Almeida et al.,
2013). Furthermore, there is a need for such tools to be firmly
rooted in a world view constrained in (bio-)physics (Hannon et al.,
1993; Nielsen, 2007, 2009; Nielsen and Müller, 2009).
Many applications of for instance exergy to Cleaner Production,
Industrial Ecology and LCA (Bonilla et al., 2010; Valero et al., 2010a)
exist at relatively detailed levels like for depletion of resources
(Valero et al., 2010b; Zhang et al., 2009; Liu and Müller, 2012;
Boryczko et al., 2014), activities and production that are in partic-
ular problematic like transports and building materials (Seckin
et al., 2013; Benhelal et al., 2012; Valderrama et al., 2012), food
production (Apaiah et al., 2006; Ingwersen, 2012; Rugani et al.,
2013; Liew et al., 2014; Moya et al., 2013) and analyse of the con-
sequences of new and more sustainable alternatives, like wind and
13
solar power and various forms of bio-fuels (Koroneos et al., 2003;
Talens et al., 2007; Torio and Schmidt, 2010; Koroneos and
Tsarouhis, 2012; Koroneos et al., 2012; Xydis, 2009, 2013, 2015;
Arvidsson et al., 2012). While many tools and sometimes also in-
dicators have been proposed (Herva et al., 2011; Cu

cek et al., 2012;
Carvalho et al., 2014) only a few have been implemented at larger
geographical scales like regions or countries (e.g. Rosen, 1992;
Rosen and Dincer, 1997; Nakicenovic et al., 1996; Ertesvåg, 2001,
2005; Hammond and Stapleton, 2001; Wall et al., 1994; Wall,
1990, 1997; Warr et al., 2010) and hardly any have presented fully
fledged indicators of the sustainability level of a society. At the
same time national accountings are rarely detailed enough to allow
for precise determination of sectors where particular efforts should
be taken. At the other end, analyzing the sectors separately, e.g.
public and private (Dincer et al., 2004), transportation (Xi and Chen,
2005), utility and commerce (Saidur et al., 2007), and industry
(Ozdogan and Arikol, 1995) does not allow for a relative comparison
of the respective roles of the sectors that is needed to make de-
cisions about the “right” actions to take. In addition, there is also a
problem of transferring results of such analyses between
geographical regions.
Whereas the first type of system descriptions mentioned above
may be considered to belong to a macroscopic universe the latter
can be viewed as belonging to a smaller scale and even microscopic
view. Thus we may speak of a technical analogue to the discrepancy
between macro- and micro-economical approaches to analyses of
economics of our societies. Just as economical methods have been
split in the approaches to economic analysis, we may need to split
thermodynamic approaches to sustainability between the (at least)
two domains.
At almost the same time as of introduction of thermodynamic
views to societies we may identify a breakthrough in ecosystem
theory, a development that allowed for a similar view to be intro-
duced to ecological systems. An increasing number of theoretical
ecologists turned in this direction and dedicated their studies to-
wards addressing the complexity and flexibility of ecosystems
trying to understand them as so called Complex Adaptive Systems
or CAS for short. These studies have among other things concen-
trated on the importance of exchanges of energy and matter in the
systems and how regulatory interactions together form a system
with self-organizing and seemingly also self-optimizing properties.
Such studies may roughly divided in two major directions, namely
one taking network theory as an entrance point and another using a
thermodynamic framework for interpretation. Both are suitable
views to transfer to our society in order to improve our under-
standing of sustainability (Nielsen, 2007; Nielsen and Müller,
2009).
Extending thermodynamics into the domain of ecosystems in-
dicates that the adaption and selection in these systems may well
be rooted in what can only be interpreted as a “strive” for increasing
thermodynamic efficiency. Major debates though have centred
around whether eco-systems would develop to maximize their
entropy production, following the Maximum Entropy Principle
described by Jaynes (1957a,b) or if they would tend to minimize
entropy as stated by Prigogine and co-workers (e.g. as popularized
through Prigogine and Stengers, 1984). The first principle has been
defended by Kay and Schneider while Jørgensen and co-workers
have argued that a consequence of both principles e although
being of different importance during the various phases of
ecosystem development e would be that nature would tend to
maximize their exergy storage. The latter viewpoint has been found
to be compatible with many of the findings derived from network
theoretical studies.
Having this knowledge in mind and as both society and nature
are complex systems (e.g. Abel, 1998) the idea of using the same
14 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29
type of ecosystem based studies in order to understand our soci-
eties is not far away. On one hand, the two types of systems share
many of the properties which make up complexity, many compo-
nents, many interconnections, many regulatory processes, etc. On
the other, making just an intuitive judgement of what is going on in
a society as compared to an ecosystem will lead to the immediate
conclusion that the two types of systems perform with quite
different and in many aspects opposite trends (Nielsen, 2007;
Nielsen and Müller, 2009).
Although, the application of thermodynamics as framework to
an interpretation of function of our societies has been suggested
and advocated from time to time by several authors (see above),
Georgescu-Roegen (1971) probably took a central role in initiating
the idea of a possible coupling between thermodynamics and
economy. While Ayres (1998, 1999) and Sciubba (2003) in partic-
ular have continued this line we have in this first attempt of making
a sustainability analysis of a society omitted the economical per-
spectives in order to reduce complexity of the issue. Thus, we stick
with considerations on energy and matter and whether resources
can be view as renewable or non-renewable.
Meanwhile, only a few of the above mentioned contributions
have addressed the role of thermodynamics in giving a strict
physical definition to sustainability, which is indirectly what we
attempt here. Also the contributions are usually dedicated to
studies which typical addressees the importance of various
particular technologies or the relative role of certain sectors of
society.
There a project was set up to develop method to assess the state
of sustainability for an area where the process of transition had
already been initiated. The following issues were considered to be
fundamental to development of the method:
1) Above all, the method should serve to integrate both energetic
and material relations within the society and give a strong and
robust physico-materialist basis to the definition of
sustainability
2) The method should be as general as possible and therefore be
based on structures and sectors that are recognizable in almost
any society in order to identify the role of each sector and if
certain sectors are to receive a special attention, among others
where to “pick the lowest hanging fruits”.
3) The required data acquisition should take into account that es-
timates for structures, imports and exports should to as high as
extend as possible be based on either data that are already
collected from existing databases or could be easily set available
with present technology (e.g. GIS-mapping, remote-sensing)
4) The method should concentrated on a society and at the same
time allow to identify elements within the society responsible to
large consumption of either energy or materials in order to
proceed with proper measures, i.e. the method should point out
both quantitative and qualitative issues of resource consump-
tion to be compared with relevant issues such as the future
possibilities, technological feasible, etc.
5) The estimation of values of structures, imports and exports
should allow indicators values to be established that at the same
time were simple to deduce and monitor at the same time
functional in the sense that they would reflect essential effi-
ciencies and therefore could be used to govern a given society
under consideration in the direction of increasing and eventual
full sustainability
The overall aim of this study has been to fill this gap by an
attempt to establish a relatively simple and robust methodology
which may be used as a platform to establish a thermodynamic
interpretation of the stocks and flows of a society. In this manner
the method should be a “quick and dirty” tool to give more concise
answers to questions like: Is my society sustainable? How far is
from being sustainable? Have measures implemented helped in
improving the situation? e and similar questions. The methodology
should at the same time be so general and universal as possible,
that is e take into account the knowledge that normally exist as
well as the many normal activities performed by a society as
possible. In many ways this can be seen as a realisation of the
strategy set up and proposed in Nielsen and Bastianoni (2007).
Establishing the method based on the concept of exergy is an
obvious idea as such an approach resolves some problems of
comparison of entities by bringing them on the same form, i.e.
having units of energy for both energy and matter entities. What
remains is the coupling to the economic system which has been
considered outside the scope of this work meaning that issues like
social and economic sustainability have been left out of the dis-
cussion. Sustainability has been addressed only via its physical
dimensions.
In short, accounting for major flows of a society in terms of
exergy is helping setting up management strategies which may
serve in developing the society in a direction of increased sus-
tainability or at best in reaching the level of full sustainability in
physical, materialist terms. Size of stocks and their relative
composition in renewables and non-renewables are important as
they need to be replaced at certain rates. Flows may be evaluated
for efficiencies and necessity both in terms of inputs and outputs.
The present paper describes how a systematic accounting
method can be established which may assist in the process of
evaluating the sustainability state of a societal system. The system
has been based on existing accountings of energy budgets, but in
addition it has extended by the inclusion of material flows. Like-
wise, an attempt to identify causes for the present sustainability
level has been made by subdividing the society into functional
sectors. Budgets of the sectors make it possible to identify possible
targets where measures can be taken. Action must at the same time
be following the strategy of “picking the lowest hanging fruits”.
This means that efforts must be invested where large amounts of
exergy are lost and where existing technology could easily be
implemented with the purpose of eliminating such unnecessary
losses for instance through cleaner production. From the account-
ing system some efficiency indicators have been established, which
can be estimated and continuously monitored during the evolution
of the society on the road towards sustainability.
2. The system and sectors
In order to develop such a tool it is convenient to work with a
”model society” which has a rather limited extension and well
defined or easily determined boundaries and yet performs most of
the activities undertaken by a normal society, in other words using
a society “in miniature”.
To achieve such controlled conditions it was decided to use the
Danish island of Samsø as a case study to the development and a
first test of the methodology. The island is well known for its efforts
in being self-supplying in energy e a process which has been
initiated in 1997. In brief, the environmental minister of that time,
Sven Auken, launched a competition between Danish islands which
of them could come out with the best plan for a transition to sus-
tainable energies. The island of Samsø won the competition and in
2005 a positive net budget of energy was reached. Today the island
produces more electricity than is used on the island and exports the
excess production to the surrounding societies.
The island can be seen as a reduced version of a society. It has a
population of approx. 4000 inhabitants and includes almost all
activities normally performed by Danish municipalities. The island
 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29
receives a number of tourist which accounts for approx. 350,000
overnight stays mainly in the months June to August. Distributing
this number of temporary inhabitants over the whole year corre-
sponds to having an additional extra 1000 inhabitants on the
island.
It must already be noticed here that the conditions presented
in this work will mainly be representative to systems where
agriculture plays a major role in the function of the society.
Where agriculture is less abundant and hence of less importance
it is foreseen that other activities such as fisheries, industry will
take over and that some adjustments of the framework is needed.
For instance the presence of highly intensive industrial activities
and dominance of cities may involve some adaptation of the
framework.
The population of the island has demonstrated a strong partic-
ipation in establishing the framework for, shaping and planning the
implementation with all its aspects and eventually carrying out the
process of transformation. As a consequence the energy is now
provided by 21 windmills (11 1 MW land based and 10 2.3 MW off
shore windmills). In addition 4 district heating plants have been
established which are based on straw produced by farmers on the
island and in some cases also supplied with an extra supply of
energy from adjacent photo thermal production. All in all the, is-
land has in terms of energy is now able supply enough energy for its
own consumption.
As seen in Section 3.1 a hierarchical view on the island has been
taken to organize and plan the development of the technology. The
step has been taken in order to be able to define and analyse the
relative importance of the sectors against each other and to identify
where it is most important of highest value to the society to apply
possible measures.
3. Methodology
A major scope in the development of this framework has been to
make it as general and flexible as possible. With generality is meant
that the method cover as many types of societies as possible. At the
same time it should be as easy as possible to adapt the methodol-
ogy to a new case. This means that the method in this very first
development will be affected by the fact that we are working on a
quite reduced system with a certain but given bias in its activities.
Meanwhile, considerations on how to transfer the methodology to
other types of societies have been receiving attention throughout
and should be considered as complete as possible under these
circumstances.
3.1. Basic assumptions
Some basic dogmas have entered the methodology during its
evolution and must briefly be summarized and described here:
a) A society may be described in terms of flows of energy and
matter which is supplied to, used by it and eventually leaving
the system as for instance dissipation or material wastes
b) All fluxes and storages of energy and matter in our societies
(the antroposphere including nature) may be accounted for in
terms of exergy and thus be brought on the same currency
c) Both energy and matter may be divided according to the
renewability and be designated as either renewable or non-
renewable
d) All activities in the society are taking up a certain amount of
space and can thus be associated with some geographical
extension of the activity.
e) The activities of the society may be ascertained to designated
to, described and divided into a number of sectors
15
f) A society may also be divided in a hierarchical manner so that
more knowledge is needed in order to identify reasons to
efficiencies at lower levels and thus indicate points of action
at a lower level
Re a: This point seems rather trivial and it is likely that none of
the potential readers will disagree much with this statement. What
really is new is that this paper attempts to evaluate both energy and
matter flows and stocks at the same time at the societal level -
being it a municipality (as is the case here), a larger area (like the
Danish regions formerly councils), whole countries or even larger
scale regions like Scandinavia, the Mediterranean countries or the
whole of Europe. At the same time nature is evaluated against so-
ciety (see b, d and e)
Re b: Whereas this point in many ways likewise could be seen
as trivial the fact that all flows and storages of resources may be
accounted for in terms of exergy bring several issues into the
debate around sustainability. A major issue may be that account-
ing for resource in the same currency does not necessarily guar-
antee interchangeability, e that is that one form may be
exchanged with another e and thus touches on the inevitable
discussion on possibilities of substitution which is at the crux of
the debate around the various degrees of sustainability, e.g. weak
vs. strong sustainability.
An issue of major concern when evaluating sustainability is al-
ways that one has to deal with elements quite different in character
e energy, matter and money e which all have different units (e.g.
Joule, kg and V). This of course gives rise to a problem of identifi-
cation of the proper exchange rates between the respective cur-
rencies. In this paper we use the concept of exergy to resolve at
least the first step, i.e. that of comparing energy and matter. Using
exergy e for instance either as consumption or destruction as base
to economic evaluation e may in future serve to bridge the gap to
economy (see Ayres, 1998, 1999; Wall, 1986; Sciubba, 2003)
Re c: We consider resources that depend in one way or the other
on finite reservoirs of elements (e.g. metal ores) or compounds (e.g.
fossil fuels) as basically being non-renewable. Others resources that
may be formed within the time frame with which we usually
consider our societies (e.g. agricultural products) we will consider
as renewable. Non-renewable resources must be recycled and
reused within the same time limitations e and the energy supply
for this recycling/reuse activities must be ensured to be supplied by
renewable energy sources in order to be considered sustainable.
Re d: This is the fundamental view lying behind the system
established to account for landscape usage in Europe known as the
Corine Landscape Code system (CLC). Meanwhile, the spatial res-
olution of the present system (Stjernholm, 2009) will only make
rough evaluations of sustainability possible. The system is not
necessarily followed in all other countries but with time it is
assumed that similar systems which allow for an analogous parti-
tioning of our landscapes will be established in most countries.
Re e: At the same time it is assumed that activities occupying the
space taken up in the landscapes as mentioned under section d may
be assigned to and grouped under some activities typically un-
dertaken by our societies. As energy supply is an important starting
point to the transition towards sustainability for a society e the
understanding of which is crucial in order to take the first steps e
we have taken this as a sector on its own. The sectors together with
their delimitations are described in Table 1 and 2.
Re f: When it comes to take action that even if an energy ac-
counting of an area exists on a meta-level - it is clear that this is not
enough to direct our management. This is just another reason to
stress the importance of a splitting the analysis in a manner that
dedicates activities to various sectors in order to answer questions
such as: which of the sectors are responsible to the highest
16 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29

Table 1
CLC-codes. The landscape of Samsø divided according to the CLC-system together with the respective areas estimated from various sources.

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Type Area [km2] Remarks

1 Artificial areas 11. Urban fabric 111 Continuous urban fabric 1.63 City
112 Discontinuous urban fabric 3.24 countryside
12 Industrial, commercial and transport units 121 Industrial and commercial units Roads I 2.000 Paved roads
122 Road and rail networks and Roads II 0.442 non-paved
associated land p/nd e
123 Port areas p/nd e
124 Airports
13 Mine, dump and construction sites 131 Mineral extraction sites p/nd 0.073 Raw materials
132 Dump sites p/nd
133 Construction sites
14 Artificial, non-agricultural vegetated areas 141 Green urban areas p/nd
142 Sport and leisure facilities
2 Agricultu-ral areas 21 Arable land 211 Non-irrigated arable land 83.26 Not separated here
22 Permanent crops 222 Fruit trees and berry plantations
23 Pastures 231 Pastures
24 Heterogenous agricultural areas 242 Complex cultivation patterns
243 Land principally occupied by
agriculture with significant areas
of natural vegetation
3 Forest and 31 Forests 311 Broad-leaved forest mixed, 8.812 Not distinguished
semi-natural areas 312 Coniferous forest deciduous in tables
313 Mixed forest evergreens
32 Shrubs and/or herbaceous associations 321 Natural grasslands Meadows 0.676
322 Moors and heath land Commons 6.520
324Transitional woodland/shrub Moors 0.787
Heather 2.067
4.314
33 Open spaces with little or no vegetation 331 Beaches, dunes, and sand plains Meadows 1.617 Limited importance
4 Wetlands 41 Inland wetlands 411 Inland marshes e
412 Peat bogs e
42 Coastal wetlands 421 Salt marshes e
423 Intertidal flats e
5 Water bodies 51Inland waters 512 Water bodies 0.532
52 Marine waters 521 Coastal lagoons e
523 Sea and ocean e
111.66 Total

Remarks: Roads I and Roads II are paved/unpaved roads, length estimated from MapInfo data from municipality e 333.349 m and 147.410 m. Data for various types of larger
nature according to CLC is identified from municipal data.

consumptions and/or destructions of exergy. Meanwhile, in order
to take proper action we need information to be on a slightly more
detailed level, i.e. digging at least one step further down to deter-
mine where actions can or cannot be undertaken. In other worlds
we must take a hierarchical view on society to be able to take the
right decisions. The view can be illustrated in Fig. 2.Fig. 1.
In the following the more detailed analysis of the 6 sectors will
be described. An analysis of the situation around the waste man-
agement of the island was not a part of the original plan but it was
decided to include a simple estimation of its potential importance
as data for this area could be provided with relatively ease.
Whereas the method developed is aimed to be general and all
sectors are represented on the island of Samsø it is likely that the
dominance of the agricultural domain over the other sectors with
lead to a situation where further refinement in other sectors is
needed in case of eventual future applications. This is particular the
case of the industrial sector which is dominated by factories and
plants which are closely related to agricultural activities and not
representing any hard core industries per se.
3.2. Energy
An accounting of the energy supply, imports as well as distri-
bution for various purposes of usage has been established every
second year since 1997 (i.e. in odd years) by the Danish company
PlanEnergi (www.planenergi.dk) e a company making similar
budgets for a number of Danish municipalities. The budget was for
this study transformed by converting the energies into their
corresponding value in terms of exergy using values mostly derived
from literature studies (for values see Table 3).
The latest data-set available to this study was the year 2011 and
it was therefore decided to use this year as a baseline to the
development of an exergy based evaluation of sustainability in a
municipality. From the established energy accounting it is also
possible divide the energies into types: 1) fossil fuels and de-
rivatives which are considered non sustainable, 2) energy from
wind power or solar radiation (covering photo-voltaic and photo-
thermal energies) and 3) energy derived from biomass. The two
latter types are considered to be sustainable. The values for various
types of energies at the beginning and at present are shown in
Table 4.
Of the outputs all energies are considered to be dissipated and
thus exergy is considered to be degraded when ending up at the
consumers. The only high density exergy leaving the system is
contained in the surplus of electricity from wind power generated
on the island and exported to the main land (Jutland) west of island.
3.3. Public sector
The consumption of exergies by the public sector may be
derived from the budget made above. Another issue is to estimate
the amount of infrastructure making up this sector in terms of
exergy for which purpose a methodology needed to be established.
Many of the data common to the following sectors have also been
taken from the yearly statistics published by Statistics Denmark
(Danmarks Statistik, 2011).
 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29 17

Table 2
Sectors of society-delimitations and explanations.

Sector Delimitation

Energy The energy sector includes all activities connected to

provide energy to the island e being it imports of fossil
fuels of capture of wind power by turbines e as well as
the consumption of energy on the island through
heating or transports.
Public The public sector involves all structures and adjacent
consumption that we normally consider to belong to
our municipality and the related services or to be part of
“public” activities.
Private The private sector includes the structures, consumption
and activities undertaken in our everyday “family” life.
This includes housing facilities, necessary commodities
as well as contributions to connect us with other sectors
for instance through transport to and from work,
bringing fetching and children, shopping, etc.
Agriculture Here all activities connected to the exploitation of areas
reported as farmlands have been registered, including
areas presently registered as fallows. It has been found
necessary to sub-divide the activities in two e in a crop
production and livestock sub-sector respectively.
Structures such as barns and stables are considered here
whereas housing is considered as part of the private
sector.
Industry, Commerce The industry here is mainly derived from agricultural
and Trade activities and is related to either food processing or
packaging and export of fresh crop materials, mainly
potatoes, onions, beets and pumpkins
Nature Nature is here considered to be areas not exploited or
heavily impacted by humans activities. As forestry on
the island us mostly used in the form of extensive
production and undisturbed over longer periods of time
the forest areas are considered to belong to this sector.

In the end a possible route to make such an estimate was laid

out. The method takes and entrance point in two databases of
Danish buildings referred to as BBR (Bygnings-og Boligregistret)
and ESR (Ejendomsstamregistret), respectively. The two registers
allow identification of areas (m2) of buildings together with a
classification of uses and ownerships.
A rude inventory of the relative contents of various materials
(matter per m2) included in a number of building types have been
identified (Nielsen, 1993; Vium, 2006) and the relative exergy
content in the matter (exergy per kg) may be identified from
various sources. The exergy contained in the buildings may now be
identified as by summing up the contributions from areas of
building types, their material contributions and the exergy density
of the fractions (see Tables 5e7).
In principle similar calculation can be carried out for other in-
frastructures owned or run by the public such as road, cars (e.g.
used in day care), buses and ferries to run public transports.
3.4. Private House Hold (PHH) sector
The method used for this sector is similar to the one used for the
estimation of exergy consumptions (concerned with heating and
traffic) and infrastructure. The difference to the other sectors is that
all consumption of goods of a variety spanning from food, personal
items, toys, bicycles, cars, kitchen hardware, computers and other
electronics, etc. has been accounted to this sector. The values for
building infrastructure can be found in Table 8).
Only reliable data to food consumption have been identified
and thus this consumption may be estimated with relatively ease.
So far, estimates of other consumables have only been identified
in terms of money spent (typical per family or capita) on the
various items and activities. It was considered to be an impossible
task to establish a correlation between prices and materials as the
Fig. 1. Map of Samsø showing its geographical position in Denmark together with
major renewable energy producing plants, e windmills and heating.
two are not likely to be correlated with an acceptable certainty.
Furthermore, as the analysis at the present is not working with
cumulative exergy values, i.e. taking the production “hinterland”
into consideration, this exergy contribution of this although
consumption rate is high has been considered to be of minor
importance.
3.5. Agriculture, forestry and fisheries sector
As stated above this sector is considered to be composed of 4
sub-sectors which all share the property of being formed around a
human activity that depends on the exploitation of or a relation to
nature in one way or the other. The sub-sectors considered here are
1) the agricultural crop production with the main purpose of food
production to humans or cattle, 2) livestock production and related
products, i.e. both meat production, milk, and eggs are would be
included here, 3) forestry of an intensive kind as for instance pro-
duction of Christmas trees, and 4) fisheries, likewise of a more
intensive kind as compared to leisure activities. The size of this
infrastructure is given in Table 9.
3.5.1. Agricultural crop production
The inputs of this sector are quite different in kind as they for
instance must include both biomass, chemicals, and energies in the
form of labour, usually nowadays carried out by use of machinery.
Thus the most important factors considered here are:
18 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29

Table 4
Energy to exergy conversion factors.

Type of energy Exergy factor Remarks

Mechanical 1 e.g. kinetic or potential

energies
Electrical 1
Chemical 1 Provided that free energy
and enthalpy is given
Nuclear 0.95
Sunlight 0.93
Hot steam 0.6
Biomass 0.5
District heat 0.3
Heat at room temperature 0.1
Thermal radiation 0 In balance with surroundings

Table 5
Exergy balance of energy sector in 1997 and 2011.

Energy type/source 1997 2011 Remarks

Energy Exergy Energy Exergy

Fossil fuel derived

Electricity Import 99 99 0 0
LPG and petroleum 2.8 2.8 2 1.9
Oils 133 133 78 74.1
Diesel 155.4 155.4 220 209
JP1 0 e 39 e Excluded as
consump-tion is
external
Petrol 41.8 41.8 73 69.4

Biomass
Straw 51.7 25.9 87 26.1
Fig. 2. Showing a hierarchical partitioning of a society into activity sector and activities Woodpellets 1.6 0.8 67 33.8
within the sectors exemplified by the island of Samsø. Wood and woodchips 5.5 2.8 34 17

Sustainable forms
Photo thermal 0.1 0 5 0.5
- input of seeds necessary to produce the crops
Wind turbines 5.6 5.6 425 425
- the energy inputs in forms of fossil fuels soil preparation, Biogas 0 0 0 0 Planned to be
treatment and harvesting implemented
- input of fertilizers (in principle both natural and artificial) 496.5 467.1 1030 856.8
- input of chemicals (pesticides, fungicides, pharmaceutical
products)
- estimation of potential or actual outcome plants per m-2], 2) the weight of thousand grains, tgw [g per 1000
grains of seed] and percentage of successful sprouting, sp [% plants
A database in the form of an EXCEL-spreadsheet has been con- per seeds], i.e. a full conversion of seed into actual plants. The
structed based on the inventory of possible crop types found on the calculation of seed needed, SN [kg ha-1] is calculated by.
homepages of the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries
npd  tgw
(in Danish: http://fs.naturerhverv.dk/oversigter-og-koder/ SN ¼
sp
afgroedekoder-2014/). Today crop codes are given for almost 300
crops.
3.5.1.2. Soil treatment. Soil treatment, preparation such as
ploughing, harrowing and rolling as well as other handling
3.5.1.1. Calculation of seeds. The calculation of the necessary seeds throughout the season together with efforts invested in the har-
(e.g. as kg ha-1) is usually calculated by the farmer from a trivial vesting are all processes which are highly dependent on the crop
equation containing the 1) the number of plants desired, npd [#
Table 6
Table 3 Areas of public sector infrastructure.
Table landscape zonation. The number of various zonation types given in the land
register together with the respective areas and relative contribution to the land- Material Value Remarks
scape on the island of Samsø. Only a small part has not been identified as belonging Stones and Sand 1.7
to any of the groups. Concrete and mortar 1.7 Bare exergy value e not cumulative exergy
Tile and clinker 0.75
Zone text Number Area [km2] pct.
Metals 200 Not differentiated
Rural zone 4665 107.34 95.65 Wood 18.7
Summer cottage area 792 1.56 1.39 Cardboard/Linoleum 59.9
Rural and summer cottage area zone 35 0.75 0.67 Mineral wool and fibre 21.1
Urban zone 678 1.63 1.45 Plastics 91.9
Urban and rural zone 473 0.93 0.83 Glass 21.1
Unknown zone code 111 0.02 0.02 Bitumen products 40
totals and percentage 6754 112.23 100 Paint etc. 1.7
 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29 19

Table 7
Composition of building types.

Type of building Stones & sand Concrete & mortar Tile & clinker Metal(s) Wood Cardboard/linoleum Mineral Plastics Glass Bitumen Paint etc.
wool/fibre

Detached house 71 672 192 7 44 0 14 2 2 2 2

Non-detached house 103 747 168 7 40 0 13 2 2 2 3
Multi storey building 69 855 141 17 36 0 9 2 3 1 2
Farm building 276 722 62 17 23 0 4 1 0 1 0
Industry building 158 934 56 20 13 2 8 1 1 5 1
Administration 156 918 62 28 18 2 7 4 2 2 2
and offices

type (species of plants). Estimates of the energy invested per ha Pimentel (1980), Pimentel and Pimentel (1996) and Hovelius
have been taken from a report comparing organic and conventional (1997) have been considered and estimates constructed from
farming systems (Dalgaard et al., 2002) together with the growth these sources have been used.
instructions given by the farmer's organisation for the various crop
types have been used to calculate the energy invested in this 3.5.1.4. Estimation of crop outcomes. The outputs from this sector
manner for each crop type. are made up of the crops harvested and the energies which have
been dissipated through the activities. As seen later crops are
3.5.1.3. Chemicals (fertilizers and pesticides). In the same growth leaving the island both as fresh and manufactured goods. The
manuals instructions for the applications of manure or artificial minimum necessary input in exergy in the form of solar radiation
fertilizers to specific crop types are described and it is assumed that has been taken as equal to the net production of the given crops
the farmers in general are following these instructions. under consideration.
The data for use of other chemicals (pesticides, herbicides and The potential outcome has been calculated using the average
fungicides) have been taken from the statistical reports in the area outcome of the respective crop types (10-years average where
e describing the average use of specific pesticides sensu lato used in possible).
Denmark (approx. 90 substances) e under the assumption that the In the reporting instructions to Danish farmers of the Ministry
farmers on Samsø do not deviate from the farmers in the rest of the of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries a code system for the various
country. In the cases of chemicals the exergy values given by crop types may be found. The code system is used to identify the
Szargut et al. (1988), Szargut, 2005, Rivero and Garfias (2006), type of crops on all the field areas used by the farmers, which
likewise are reported to the web-portals of the ministry. The
homepage descriptions together with differentiation of the har-
Table 8 vesting of perennial crops makes the number of possible crops
Exergy contents of fractions of building materials. grown in DK sum up to approx. 350 crop types, out of which
Building (utilization) Area Calculated as type slightly less than 100 have been identified on the island of
Samsø. So far all necessary information described under the
Administration 4661 Administration etc.
Schools 12,200 Multi storey building above points has been established for the crops grown on the
Kindergartens 1682 Non-detached house island.
Hospital 912 Multi storey building
Library 7923 Administration etc.
Elderly homes 4595 Non-detached house 3.5.2. Livestock production
Power/heating plants 8457 Industry For the calculation of the importance of this sub-sector an
Waste, solid 400 Industry entrance point has been taken in the data obtained from the au-
Waste water 921 Industry thorities undertaking the surveillance of the farms involved (nor-
Road administration 782 Industry
mally the municipality). From the number of various animals the
Fire brigade 865 Industry
Sport facilities 6694 Industry amount of input food as well as the output of manure and slurry can
Social facilities 3349 Industry be calculated from data books of the farmer's organisations
Tourist facilities 592 Administration etc. (Jørgensen, 2008; Ancker et al., 2011).
Kiosks 70 Administration etc.
Sheds 144 Administration etc.
Total area 54,247 3.5.3. Forestry
The forestry activities belonging to intensive agricultural activ-
ities on the island are low in quantity when considering the areal
Table 9 extensions reported from the farmers. The rest of the forests are
Areas and exergies of private sector infrastructure. likewise exploited to a certain extend but the activity is judged as so
Building (utilization) Area Calculated as type
extensive that the areas are considered as natural areas and
therefore enter the calculation of the exergy value or content of
Multi storey buildings 14,814 Multi storey building
these areas, i.e. are evaluated as nature.
Terrace houses 29,040 Non-detached
Non-detached 201,388 Non-detached
Other habitation 7872 Detached 3.5.4. Fisheries
Farm habitation 52,028 Detached
Fishery activities previously took place from the island but
Outhouse 90,608 Detached
Garage 23,731 Detached presently hardly exist on the island and not of any quantitative
Carport 12,844 Detached significance any more. The few fishermen left and their in-
Recreative habitation 4911 Detached vestments in this activity must be categorized under leisure and
Summer cottages 68,434 Detached only contribute to the private consumption of the respective
Total area
families.
20 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29
3.6. Industry, commerce and trade (ICT) sector
The activities belonging to this sector are evaluated by the
estimation of consumption and production from the one factory left
on the island that produce manufactured foods from the crops of
the island (mainly pickled products, jam and marmalade). The
values have been supplied by the factory in the forms of volumes
and weights of fossil fuels, crops processed and packaging materials
and additives used. The values have been converted into respective
exergies by using the chemical exergy values found in Szargut et al.
(1988) and Szargut (2005). The few plants taking care of storage,
packaging and distribution of the fresh food products (potatoes,
onions, carrots, beets, etc. have not been evaluated (for values see
figure x in results section xx).
3.7. Nature
A number of nature types have been identified and their
respective areal extensions have been estimated from areal maps
by use of GIS (MapInfo)-data provided by the municipality.
Average values for the standing crops of the typical biomass
found in such eco-systems together with their production values
have been taken from literature (mainly Whittaker, 1975). Work
energy content have been found from using the average free
energy of biomass of biological material of around 18,7 kJ g1 and
multiply with the areal extensions and the respective typical
biomass of the ecosystems.
The biomass of plants, animals and detritus are given in dry
weight (DW) in Table 10 and are converted into their respective
exergy values (free energy of biological material) using the same
average value of 18,7 kJ g1 DW previously mentioned for all
fractions.
3.8. Wastes
As mentioned in the above it was not originally the intention to
include any consideration on wastes in the calculations as the
purpose really was more to develop a method for the parts of
society where any simple and strict methodology had not yet been
developed. Meanwhile, as data were available and easy to get
hands on - it was decided to include some considerations on the
potential importance of this field. At present almost all wastes
leave the island for processing elsewhere in Denmark, but in order
to govern the evolution of the municipality in a direction of higher
sustainability it may eventually turn out to be important to have at
least some ideas of the about the amounts of exergy waste bound
of the various waste fractions leaving the island together with an
evaluation of their significance when recycled on the island
(instead of the present exports). The values found are given in
Table 11.
Table 10
Areas and exergy of agricultural infrastructure.
Building (utilization) Area Calculated as type
Farms
Farm buildings 400 Industry
Stables and barns 260365 Farm building
Outhouses 10464 Industry
Industry, commerce & trade
Office buildings 39726 Administration etc.
Services 11422 Non-detached
Production facilities 40628 Industry
Transport and storage 4396 Industry
Other buildings for trade 3978 Industry
Total area
3.9. Efficiency indices
After establishing an exergy accounting for all sectors and their
respective activities connected to them it is now possible to
construct a variety of efficiency indices. The possibilities of con-
struction are numerous out of which a few have been selected to
test the approach and determine what can be achieved by imposing
such a strict exergy perspective on a society.
One obvious indicator to monitor in a society is the exergy
budget to see whether the balance is positive or negative, i.e. the
society acts as a producer, dissipater or possible accumulator of the
exergy led to by the inputs.
Next, from the material gathered it is possible to construct a
long series of sustainability indicators wherefore it was decided to
calculate and test but a few - simply in order to determine whether
the technology and methodology developed by subsiding the in-
dicators to a test by calculating them for two situation, the one
situation illustrates the situation of the society on Samsø of today,
the other represents a future situation where initiatives have been
implemented which are believe to contribute in directing the
evolution in the direction of increasing sustainability (see Section
7&8).
Here we have chosen to concentrate on:
1) The overall exergy balance of the society e in general indicating
whether the society is a consumer (dissipater) e or generator
and possibly also exporter (as it shall be demonstrated is the
case here) of exergy, i.e. exergy in output less exergy in input.
2) A stock indicator which tells how much infrastructure is main-
tained at what price in terms of imports of exergy, i.e. exergy of
infrastructure per exergy in input
3) A Renewability indicator which is simply the ratio between
renewable and non-renewable resources, i.e. exergy in inputs
coming from renewable resources over exergy in inputs coming
from non-renewable resources
4) A Renewable efficiency e which is the proportion of exergy in
inputs coming from renewable resources divided by the total
exergy in inputs
5) Output-Input (O/I) indicator e which will partly reflect the
exergy balance but also tells how far away the system is from
sustainability relatively. The indicator is calculated as the exergy
in outputs divided by exergy in inputs. Roughly, a sustainable
society should have and O/I-indicator of one. If the indicator is
less than one then the system is certainly not sustainable, but
even if the ratio is above one (1) is only tells that the system
generates more exergy than it uses. This, as we shall see, in itself
is no guarantee of the society also being sustainable, for instance
in a case where it is still dependent on non-renewable resources
like fossil fuels.
4. Results
Following the methodological scheme described above exergy
budgets of the various sectors and in some cases sub-sectors have
been established. The various estimated flows can be further
divided as described in the introduction according to whether they
are energetic or material and whether they are considered to be
renewable or not.
4.1. The energy sector
From the energy budgets elaborated by PlanEnergi a budget as
presented in Fig. 3 can be constructed. Again it should be noted that
this balance deals only with flows that are directly related to the
energy budget of the island. As such is does not include materials
 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29 21

Table 11
Areas and exergy of nature exergetic contents of fractions.

Ecosystem Autotrophic components Heterotrophic components Litter

Area [m2] [g DW m2] [g DW m2 y1] [g DW m2] [g DW m2 y1] [g DW m2]

Forest 8,811,990 32,500 1250 100 40 14,500

Moor 787,010 15,000 2000 20 32 5000
Meadows 676,064 1600 600 60 80 3600
Commons 6,520,003 1600 600 60 80 3600
Littoral meadows 1,617,040 1600 600 60 80 3600
Heath lands 2,067,890 15,000 700 40 30 5100
Lakes 580,816 200 500 10 10 5000
Streams 558,220 1000 100 10 10 1000

with the exception being the imports of fossil fuels to the island
that are material in character. Here they are seen as mere energy
carriers and are therefore considered in this section.
The exergy produced by wind (and at this time a few inputs
derived from various sources of solar energy technologies) together
with biomass are considered to be renewable, we find that 65% of
the exergies find their origins in resources which could be
considered sustainable. On the output side it is seen that the inputs
have to a high extent been dissipated by the system with the
exception being the surplus in exergy production as electricity
produced by mainly the windmills and exported from the island to
the national network in the rest of Denmark.
maintenance have been estimated considering a turnover time of
bitumen products in roads of approx. 20 years. The exergy value of
ferries has been estimated from their actual weights and under the
assumption that their main component is metal.
The collection of solid waste is undertaken by the municipality
and for the time being almost entirely exported from the island to
an uncertain destiny e among others incineration e on the main-
land (Jutland, in the cities of Skanderborg and Århus). To this is
added the exports of bitumen waste from remodelling of roads.
Meanwhile, this amount is twice as much as could be derived from
the data obtained from the plant handling the solid waste (approx.
187 TJ, see Table 12).

4.2. The public sector 4.3. Private household sector

For this sector contribution of materials to the sector needs to be
estimated. Out of the inputs it seems that much of the exergy bound
in materials ends up as what we shall refer to as the infrastructure
of the sector. The budget of imports, outputs and storage is pre-
sented in Fig. 4.
What strikes the eye is that the part of infrastructure, even by
very conservative estimates ends up as being the major part of the
infrastructure serving the society. The necessary input for
The exergy budget of the private household sector is presented
in Fig. 5. The sector demonstrates a high variety of inputs although
at least some more are known to exist, such as imports of utilities of
any kind (spanning from furniture to electronic devices) to the
sector. Although consumption data for such items exist they are at
present only in the form of “money spent” and therefore not easily
translated into exergy.
Considering that the electricity used in this sector is mainly
derived from wind turbines on or just off-shore the island we may
estimate that a 127,6 TJ, corresponding to 62% out of the 205,6 TJ

Fig. 3. Energy and exergy budget of the energy sectors (values of energy and exergy
separated) by a slash. The inputs and outputs have been derived from the inventories Fig. 4. Exergy budget of the Public sector. A slash is now separating values and exergy
elaborated by the company PlanEnergi. An excess production of 316 TJ of electricity is and their respective loss value, i.e. a value of zero means that the amount of exergy is
leaving the island. dissipated and therefore not available to the system any longer.
22 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29

Table 12
Exergy of wastes from the island.

Type fraction Amount Dry content WE density In fraction

kg #Fraction MJ kg1 TJ

Garbage 1,760,800 1 56.3 99.13

Large refuse 663,520 1 56.3 37.36
Garden garbage 528,780 0,8 18.7 7.91
Industry, trade & commerce 469,840 1 59.9 28.14
Sludge 193,980 0,9 18.7 3.26
Building materials 611,080 1 5.3 3.24
Bitumen 3080 1 40 0.12
Plastics from agriculture 28,340 1 91.9 2.6
Concrete and stones 110,900 1 1.7 0.19
Soils 2,735,120 1 1.7 4.65
Total 186.6

Note: dry content of garden garbage is estimated, while the value for sludge is taken
from Valderrama et al. (2013).

used for driving this sector is coming from renewable resources,

and that still an additional 78 TJ are needed and presently derived
from fossil fuels for heating and transports.

4.4. Agriculture, forestry and fisheries sector

As referred above this sector is the most complex one and
therefore had to be divided into several sub-sectors in the hierarchy
shown in Fig. 2. As forestry is considered to be very extensive the
dominant part of this activity is considered under the sector
referred to as “Nature” and fisheries nowadays only exist as a lei-
sure activity the two sub-sectors are not be included here, although
they may be important to the analysis of other societies. Therefore
only the two agricultural sub-sectors: crop and livestock produc-
tion, respectively, are presented here.
4.4.1. Exergy budget of agricultural crop production
The exergy budget of this sub-sector is presented in Fig. 6. The
numbers in this diagram represents and aggregation of a relatively
large number of crops. Out of the around 300 crops divided into a
number of crop types in the instructions given to farmers in the
homepages of the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries
Fig. 6. Exergy budget of the crop production subsector. It is seen that this sector is
driven by a high exergy input in solar radiation fixed as carbohydrates during
photosynthesis. This production forms important inputs to livestock production as well
as the related food production plants.
approximately 90 crops have been identified on the island. Thus,
the crops represented are quite different in character, spanning
from the most ordinary cereal crops to highly specialized items. The
more abundant crops are wheat and barley together with potatoes,
onions, as well as beets, pumpkins and various sorts of cucumbers.
The first two main groups are mostly exported from the island as
fresh goods to be processed elsewhere. The latter are mainly pro-
cessed on the island before exports by the only factory left. All in all,
the activities of this sub-sector are giving raise most of the activities
in the ICT-sector (see Section 4.5).
The values of necessary inputs as well as the estimated pro-
duction have been taken from literature by entering the necessary
parameters for all existing crops into a spreadsheet for further
calculations.
As seen in Fig. 6 out of the inputs to this sub-sector exergy in the
solar radiation e driving the photosynthesis of the crops e is by far
the most dominating input of exergy, a direct illustration of
ecosystem services. The exergy values of the remaining inputs,
electricity (19 TJ), fossil fuels used by machinery in soil handling
and harvesting processes (30,7 TJ), seeds input needed to initiate
crops (29,8 TJ), and fertilizers (52,3 TJ) are all in the same orders of
magnitude, while pesticides represent a value of 4,6 TJ only. (It
should still be remembered that this value represents mere
chemical exergy and as such does not include any hinterland con-
siderations, i.e. the cumulated exergy during the production and
other procurement of these substances.
Due to the large inputs of solar radiation and considering that
only fossil fuels, fertilizers and pesticides originate in non-renewable
resources this sub-sector demonstrates that it is 97,5% relying on
renewable resources. At the same time the outputs from the sector
are all assisting in improving the sustainability in adjacent sectors by
providing exergy to food (mainly exports), processing (industry) and
heating to both the public and the private sector.

4.4.2. Exergy budget of agricultural livestock production

Fig. 5. Exergy budget of the Private sector. A slash is referring to the same as in Fig. 4. The calculation of exergy in this sector is based on the inventory
The infrastructure in utilities and transport devices has not been estimated. made for the island by the relevant authorities inspecting the
 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29 23

livestock on the island and keeping them under surveillance in

accordance with Danish laws.
Of the exergy of represented by the animals pigs and cattle are
responsible 86% and 14%, respectively. Other animal groups like
poultry, horses, sheep and goats are known to be present but for
this particular year they together represent less than 1%.
The exergy budget of the livestock sub-sector is shown in Fig. 7.
It is seen that this sub-sector is driven by the input of feeds mainly
derived from crop production on the island but that only 11% of this
is ending up in actual production. It is assumed that approximately
one tenth of the livestock mass is remaining on the island for
continuation of breeding.

4.5. Industry, commerce and trade (ICT)-sector

This sector in its use of and exports of exergy is dominated by

the only factory left on the island which is mainly producing pre-
served goods such as jam and pickled vegetables for exports to be
distributed in the rest of Denmark. Only a very small part of the
vegetables may occasionally be imported mainly from Germany in
situations where the local farmers have failed to produce a given
crop in sufficient quantity or quality. The budget of this sector is
shown in Fig. 8. Fig. 8. Exergy budget of the ICT-sector mainly based on data from the food processing
From the figure it can be seen that fuels, jars and packaging, plant on the island. Wastes from this production is returned to society via the garbage
collection system or applied to fields on the island.
vegetables and additives (sugars, vinegar and other chemicals) all
are responsible for amounts of exergy in the same order of
magnitude. Almost all of this 92% is ending up in the final products represent more than 10 times the terrestrial area, but further cal-
and only the remaining 8% ends up as waste. Inputs of electricity culations have been omitted due to lack of reliable data for this type
and fuels are considered to be dissipated and lost to the systems as of system.
no attempts of heat exchange as an input of the remaining thermal As seen, although the terrestrial nature represents a much
exergy has been implemented. smaller part of the area of the island than the area dedicated to
agricultural activities the exergy in biomass of nature is twice as
4.6. Nature high as the exergy of the agricultural crop production.

The nature represents a set of systems which are entirely driven
by the exergy input through solar radiation. The contributions of
the 9 types of terrestrial systems are shown in Table 13. The coastal
waters would be contributing significantly to the budget as they
4.7. Wastes
The wastes as it can be seen from Table 11/12 are of quite a big
variety of kinds of materials. Although well sorted in fractions they
are all (close to 100%) exported, i.e. leave the island and as result they
are unexploited locally. Some of the fractions may be interesting to
further integrate with energy production system or in material
cycling on the island, at least organic materials should be considered
to enter in either composting, be brought back to soils or some sort
of biofuel production process. Meanwhile, as the situation is now
they must be considered as values of exergy lost from the island.

5. Exergy budget of the island 2011

Combining the above knowledge it is possible to construct an

exergy balance of the island as sketched in Fig. 9. It can be seen

Table 13
Exergy of nature.

Components WE in WE in WE in Total we in
ecosystem type plants [TJ] animals [TJ] litter[TJ] type[TJ]

Forests 6329.2 16.5 2389.4 8735.1

Moors 140.5 0.3 73.6 214.4
Meadows 20.2 0.8 45.5 66.5
Commons 212.8 7.3 438.9 659.1
Littoral Meadows 48.4 1.8 108.9 159.1
Heath lands 632.8 1.5 197.2 831.5
Lakes 0.2 0.1 54.3 54.5
Streams 0.8 0 3.5 4.3
Hedges, etc. 129.1 4.8 290.4 424.3
Coastal waters 4889.2 201.7 53,781.2 58,872.1
Fig. 7. Exergy budget of the live stock production sub-sector. Exergy considerations
Totals 12,403.1 234.8 57,382.8 70,020.7
only seems to underline the inefficiency of the sector.
24 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29

7. The island and its future

It is clear that the island has some “hidden” resources that can
be drawn upon in a transition to a so called “fossil free” and fully
sustainable island. It is therefore only logical to investigate how the
sustainability and the indicators might change as a result of the
implementation of simple and obvious measures which are
believed to contribute to an evolution of the island in a direction
increasing its sustainability.
A simple scenario has been investigated which we find is real-
istic to reach in near future although the implicit reference to year
2020 is quite arbitrary. In the scenario presented by Fig. 10 the
following measures have been taken:

1) an increase in inputs of renewable energies of 5% (22 TJ) stem-

ming from renewal of existing wind turbines as well as
increased implementation of solar power in the form of
Fig. 9. Exergy balance of the island showing a gross accounting of exergies in energy
and matter of Samsø in 2011. The flows have been aggregated in REBEI: renewable photovoltaic to a resulting level of 464 TJ
energy bound exergy in inputs, NEBEI: non-renewable energy bound exergy in inputs, 2) over the period exergy in the fossil fuel consumption for the
RMBEI: renewable matter bound exergy in inputs, NMBEI: non-renewable matter three main consumption processes a) by cars corresponding to
bound exergy in inputs, EBI: exergy in energy inputs, MBI: exergy in matter inputs. The
56 TJ, b) heating 47 TJ and industrial activities 18 TJ are all
acronyms on the right side have similar meaning where I is replaced with O signifying
the output. The figure likewise give totals and divide resources into renewable and (121 TJ) to be replaced by electricity produced by the island
non-renewable inputs and outputs, respectively. wind power system, and
3) one ferry line is to be replaced as well corresponding to an es-
timate of 60 TJ and will in the future run on a mixture of elec-
that a total of 1410 TJ of exergy is presently used to drive the so- tricity and biofuel produced on the island (a fiftyefifty share of
ciety on the island and that an output of 1603 TJ is leaving it 30 TJ each) meaning a bio-gas or biodiesel produced of a similar
meaning that the island is a net exporter of exergy. This is not only amount around 30 TJ, which can be achieved by using the
due to the overhead electricity produced and exported in an organic wastes of households and the industry
amount of 316 TJ but also due to the exergies in goods leaving the
island. As a consequence the output lowers in spite of the assumed
The inputs of energy bound exergy and matter bound exergy are increase in production of electricity, e but the island is still left with
almost equal in size, 726 and 684 TJ, respectively. All in all the non- a considerable surplus of 153 TJ (see Tables 14 and 15).
renewable exergies still sums up to the major part of exergy needed The stock indicator increase mainly due to a lowering in demand
811 TJ, which corresponds to almost 58% of the inputs. This is due to of inputs but is still high, i.e. that a large infrastructure needs to be
the fact that the island still is dependent on inputs of fossil fuels. maintained. Both renewability indicators grow as expected but also
This is not only for heating but also transport takes its part as the indicates that the society still is some distance from a level which
necessary ferries to and from the island consume a large part of this can be considered sustainable. The O/I indicator is lowered slightly
input. as a consequence of the improved use of local resources in the
transition process.
6. Indicating sustainability
8. Discussion
The indicators mentioned in the above Section 3.9 may be
calculated for the sectors of the society as seen in Table 13. First of all, it should be observed that the treatment here does
As seen, the stock indicator for the “cultural” sectors is relatively consider only the mere chemical exergy inherent in the stocks and
high indicating that part of the input will be dependent on the
renewal rate of the sector. It seems that the more connected a given
activity is related to nature the lower a stock indicator.
Likewise the renewability indicator is the highest in these areas,
e.g. the crop production, and even the industrial activity is in this
case quite high as it is indirectly driven by renewable goods.
The renewability efficiency reflects the same and may look su-
perfluous in this case as it repeats the results of the previous in-
dicator. Meanwhile, the reason for retaining this dual approach is
treated in the discussion.
The output indicator is quite logically lower for the non-
productive sectors. As soon as some production is involved - be-
ing it electricity produced in energy sector or crop, livestock or the
adjacent good production this ratio raises. Meanwhile, the data
have now been aggregated and does not any longer reveal the exact
character of the material involved as it was revealed in the above
figures (xey). For example, much of the exergy output of the ICT
sector is the packaging materials as well as the goods in them, all of Fig. 10. Exergy balance of the island demonstrating a hypothetical accounting of a
which upon consumption eventually will end up as wastes else- forecasted situation in 2020. Such a situation my be obtained provided that some
where (outside the system). measures described in the text are implemented (for further details see text section).
 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29
Table 14
Sustainability indicators of sectors.
Sectors WE-types Energy Public Private
Stock indicator e 19.5 40.2
Renewability indicator 1.9 0.03 1.6
Renewability efficiency 0.65 ? 0.65
O/I-indicator 0.39 0 0.11
flows of the system meaning that the amount of exergy invested
and consumed in the process of generating the product is not
included. In other words no considerations on the so called “hin-
terland” have been taken.
Calculating the exergy inherent in stocks and buildings by
including exergy indirectly included in the product as it has been
accumulated during the production process might on one hand be a
more fair way of considering the renewability and thus sustain-
ability of a product, but on the other hand such an analysis not only
becomes more complicated as a set of LCA data must be available
for each product and following also introduces an extra layer of
uncertainty. The problems reached when working with the cu-
mulative approach are believed to be much analogous to the
problems of having different tranformities (terminology) for similar
products which can be found when using the emergy concept of
Odum, (1971a,b, 1983, 1988) to analyse production systems.
Taking this simplistic view allows that one can consider the
system alone and not blur up the results by introducing exergy
costs elsewhere, i.e. outside the system. This exclusion is deliberate
so it does not mean that the role of cumulated exergy it has been
overlooked, rather it is our opinion that it represents another
methodology which needs in this case to be separated from the
analysis but for sure deserves to be tested in the future.
At the same time we have not as previously suggested to include
the information in the genome when calculating the exergy of or-
ganisms as proposed by Jørgensen et al. (1995; Bendoricchio and
Jørgensen, 1997) and based on Morowitz (1968). Thus, the exergy
values used in this study for components of biological origin, crops
and livestocks and nature has been derived from chemical energies
and are more similar to the original calculations of exergy of eco-
systems proposed by Jørgensen and Mejer (1977, 1979; Mejer and
Jørgensen, 1979).
In brief, the new way of calculating exergy of biological material
clearly deviates from chemical exergy as the exergy of biomass is
weighed with a factor hypothesized to reflect the complexity of the
organism and the information needed to construct it (Jørgensen,
2002; Jørgensen and Svirezhev, 2004; Jørgensen et al., 2007;
Jørgensen, 2010). As a consequence this type of exergy is not
identical to chemical free energy alone it was decided to refer to
this new exergy-concept as eco-exergy (Jørgensen, 2006). Values
for this type of calculation can for instance be found in Fonseca et al.
(2000) and Jørgensen et al. (2005, 2010).
For a start both values were calculated but the introduction of
weighting factors introduces some unwanted bias in the evaluation.
Whereas values for biological components when calculated based
on chemical energies the results for these components remains
within the same range as the values for other societal components.
Table 15
Comparison of sustainability indicators between 2011 and scenario 2020.
Indicator 2011 (present) 2020 (transition)
Exergy balance (O less I) 193 153
Stock indicator (S/I) 11 12
Renewable/Non-renewable ratio 0.73 1.03
Renewability efficiency 0.43 0.51
O/I-indicator 1.14 1.12
25
Crop. Livest. ICTS Nature Totals Remarks
1.41 0.1 6.4 e
38.9 Ne 5.5 e
0.97 1 0.85 e
0.35 0.51 0.79 e
Using eco-exergy, meanwhile, make the values of nature exceed
those of society with several orders of magnitude due to the in-
clusion of genetic information. It was therefore decided in this
presentation of the analysis only to present the values based on
chemical consideration. Meanwhile, the eco-exergy is believed to
be relevant to sustainability calculations as it reflects the infor-
mation inherent in biological order and structure that we destroy
with our continuous impact on nature. Hence it is valuable to
include when we consider other valorisation methods such as
“ecosystem services” (Wilhelm and Brüggemann, 2000; Kandziora
et al., 2013).
Whereas exergy as concept has found a wide acceptance in the
engineering society within the recent decades it has mostly been
implemented at micro-level i.e. for optimisation in particular cases
of optimisation of machineries and process.
At more macroscopic levels particular sectors of our society have
been investigated.
At a policy level, that is in the governance of our energy sectors
exergy seems to pay a small role and plays only little importance in
decision making that is necessary if we want to direct our society in
a more sustainable direction. Energy administration rarely con-
siders the role of materials in this and as a consequence a gap be-
tween energy policy and the world of LCA, MFA, and SFA really
seems to exist. At least the message from the latter scientific dis-
ciplines has really not penetrated efficiently into the policy making.
Environmental politics really seem to be composed of either an
energy resource world or a material resource world having hard
times to find the unifying approach that may serve to unify them.
Such a unification scheme may be found in the application of an
exergetic scheme to the analysis of a society. The statements made
here can for sure be argued to be a one-way problem as most LCA's
do also include energetic perspectives. Meanwhile this argument
does not eliminate the fact that the integrated view has not found
its way to the policy world.
Having identified a system e an island e with a high degree of
knowledge about it energy budget and at the same time in a situ-
ation where a transition to a state with an energy supply to be
dominated by renewable energies it was an obvious idea to
investigate exactly how an integration of the important material
flows would impair the analysis of such a society.
Based on the rationale and also the results this paper of the
paper it is tempting to establish a simple and strict definition of a
sustainable society in terms of exergy balances. A simple condition
of a sustainable society is the spatial and temporal existence under
the overall constraint that.
dEx
0
dt
meaning that over time the exergy may not be negative. This is a
heavy constraint for a society to live under when taking into ac-
count the imperative of the “second law of thermodynamics”,
namely that energy must always be degraded and that society thus
as a consequence will inevitably be losing its exergy.
When talking of an overall constraint it means that we may
allow for local deviations at smaller space and (shorter) time scales
26 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29
but that the general trend needs to be followed at meta-level, i.e. a
level above the smaller level under focus (focal level). A smaller
scale component having a local geographical deviation of higher
exergy consumption can survive if and only if it is continuously
supplied by surplus exergy from the surroundings which must
belong to a higher level category. At the same time the meta-level
needs to be able to absorb the entropy created by the exergy broken
down. Similar considerations can be made that allows deviations in
time (Nielsen, 2009).
Addressing the exergy in an overall manner means also that we
have not made a distinction between the various types of exergies
of either energy bound or material bound forms. So, even if the
expression may appear to represent a rather strict condition it must
be considered to represent the state of vague sustainability only. As
it appears in the above exchanges between exergy forms are
allowed that may not be feasible at all. This means that an even
more strict constraint may eventually turn out to be more valid and
realistic, namely that.
dExi
0
dt
which would allow for no exchange or replacement of energetic of
material forms of exergies with other forms - meaning that no
substitutions what so ever are allowed within such a system. This
constraint although certainly realistic might therefore be too strict
as some degree of substitution between forms which are closely
related may be allowed and practical although always at the
expense in terms of exergy.
Meanwhile, indication of sustainability in terms of such a
simple balance does not the full or true story about a society
under consideration which is clearly demonstrated by the pre-
sent study. The society may as is the case here have a negative
balance and serve as an inductor of sustainability to surrounding
regions.
The methodology laid forward in this study may be simple but
seems also to be pretty robust as a platform for initiation studies. It
is clear that the decision to take a starting point in a spatial-
geographical partitioning of the landscape is dependent on the
data availability and thus the technological stage of a given region
or country under consideration. Meanwhile, it is considered that
more and more countries invest in such technologies and efforts in
GIS-mapping of the society, and furthermore the spatial resolution
gets finer and finer. The basic registration of our society may end up
in being trivial some years from now, being automatized in its
analysis as it is possible to ecosystems (Luvall et al., 2001). Even-
tually a proper and adequate coupling to database in the format of
the registers used here (or even improved) such registration can in
the end turn out to be simple and yet providing valuable infor-
mation about exergy pools of our society.
Thus when determining the infrastructure of sectors much of
the uncertainty stems from the quite fragmentary knowledge we
have on the actual “housing stock”. It seems that at least in
Denmark no systematic registration of such data exist and even-
tually the best sources of information comes from inventory studies
meant for estimation of waste values of condemned building. A
method considering all types of buildings and their respective
composition according to construction years or derived from actual
investigations “on site” will be a tedious task. One major take home
messages has been that a considerable amount of material exergy
has been built in the infrastructure which from time to time needs
some investments. This is likewise true for other infrastructural
parts of our society such as our roads which e due to their
composition of bitumen products derived from fossil fuels e have
been found to represent quite large exergy contents.
That such a relatively big amount of resources are bound up in
infrastructure and the inevitable dissipation of exergy which occurs
as result of consumption only stresses the values of recycling
(Amini et al., 2007) and the need to have more details about
composition and elements in wastes and costs of cleaning pro-
cesses in connection to wastes e such as solid waste (Finnveden
et al., 2005; Moberg et al., 2005; Kaysen and Petersen, 2010;
Zhou et al., 2011) and waste water (Hellstro €m, 1997; Mora and
Oliver, 2006; Valderrama et al., 2013; Passarini et al., 2014). This
in turn points at the importance of implementing Exergetic Life
Cycle Assessment (ELCA) as suggested by Mester et al. (2006).
For identifying the optimal point for reuse or recycling it may be
convenient to integrate considerations like Statistical Entropy
Analysis (Rechberger and Graedel, 2002) in new approaches.
For a more correct and sufficient estimation of many con-
sumption rates we may need to reconsider if our present way of
gathering data is adequate to assist in and direct a transition to-
wards sustainability. The present way of estimating activities in
terms of economy may eventually turn out not only to be insuffi-
cient as money use and material/energetic consumption rates are
not easily convertible. This is valid for most of the consumptions in
particular those that are connected to private household sector.
As sectors get more similar to industrial activities as is the case
with agriculture and industry proper they also get more dependent
on various sorts of registration by not only society but also because
detailed knowledge about your own activities becomes a major
pivot point to potential actions. Unfortunately, for industries
detailed knowledge are only required by law for the larger ones
meaning that much knowledge of small and medium sized in-
dustries remains unused. This type of industries is often “endan-
gered” but would for sure benefit from political initiatives aimed at
facilitating the implementation of cleaner production actions.
The actual transition of the society as described here might look
simple at first sight, but this is far from being the case. The
replacement of infrastructural elements, such as a shift from con-
ventional cars to cars driving on any alternative fuel would have a
strong impact on the economy of private households as they will
have to invest in these new cars. Likewise will any investments in
new ferries to and from the island will also be reflected in the prices
of tickets. The problem of heat supply is probably the least of these
problems to be solved as it is possible by either replacement of the
remaining oil boilers in combination with a higher percentage of
the building areas being integrated with the existing district
heating systems of the island.
The construction of indicators and applying them on individual
sectors as well as the whole society seems from these first results to
present much potential. Meanwhile, knowledge of indicator values
does not guarantee a proper direction of measures. In other words
they tell that action must be taken if one wish to improve the in-
dicator but not where exactly is to be taken. In order to take proper
action knowledge about details at lower levels are needed which
only stresses the importance of the hierarchical view of society
used for the implementation of the exergy analysis presented here.
9. Conclusions
The major results of the above described project can be briefly
summarized as follows:
1) A geographical and hierarchical based system and methodology
to estimate the exergy balances of smaller, regional societies
have been established using the Danish island of Samsø a model
society
2) The exergy accounting may serve to indicate where large inputs
are necessary to drive a sector or the society as a whole
 S.N. Nielsen, S.E. Jørgensen / Journal of Cleaner Production 96 (2015) 12e29
3) it may reveal where large stocks have been build up which will
need attention, replacement and management through time as
well as
4) act to distinguish between non-exploited and valuable outflows
and the ones that are dissipated e in the latter case the necessity
and magnitude of the dissipation will tell if further measures are
to be taken.
5) The method allows the accounting to distinguish between
exergy bound in energetic and material flows e as well as exergy
originating in renewable and non-renewable resources,
respectively
6) At the same time a set of indicators have been derived and
suggested as usable measures that may be monitored during a
transitions process of a society
7) The developmental trends of the indicators have been investi-
gated through application in a scenario describing a possible
future evolution of the island
8) The indicators respond as expected and may therefore be
valuable to follow during the transition towards increasing and
full sustainability.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the VELUX foundation which have supported
this project financially, to the Energy Academy on the island for
providing the necessary infrastructure, to the staff there, the mu-
nicipality, the local farmers organisation and a great deal of “is-
landers” who have been involved in the project in some way
helping to clarify the various activities on the island. Also the
company PlanEnergi was helpful in providing data and giving ad-
vices on their further acquisition in connection to this project.
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