Sustainability Paradigm: Intelligent Energy System

The promotion of sustainable development is the European affirmation in the international arena and is European policy for the Union. However, the current situation—where the Sustainability is more intention than a practice—risks such European affirmation. In our analysis, we have assumed that the energy system is a complex system, which may interact with its surrounding by utilizing resources, exchange conversion system products, utilizing economic benefits from conversion processes and absorbing the social consequences of conversion processes. Information and communication technologies are recognized as one of the pillars in the development of sustainable global life support systems. Information and communication technologies improve the capability to monitor and manage energy systems and to help to reduce the impact of natural and human-induced disasters through prediction, early warning and registration of potential changes which may lead to the unexpected disasters. With the respective methodology and monitoring system, the resilience of an energy system can be evaluated as the safety parameter of the energy system. In this respect, it is of the paramount importance to introduce the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in the online evaluation of an energy system. The main attention of this paper is devoted to: (1) Energy efficiency as a complex problem, which has to be defined with an additive function of agglomerated economic efficiency, environment efficiency and social efficiency; (2) Information and communication technologies recognized as the tool for the development of sustainable and safe global life support systems. This comprises monitoring tools for the assessment and evaluation of potential degradation and resilience of the energy system; (3) Multi-criteria evaluation method is verified as an appropriate procedure for the Sustainability Index determination.