Thermoeconomic analysis of Alessandria district: A case study for an engineering thermodynamic indicator for sustainability

Gross Domestic Product is usually the reference indicator to quantify the socio-economic consequences of the national policies due to its link to the increase of the nation well-being. But, it is used to evaluate the total monetary valuation of the productive systems, without any relation to the technological level or the environmental impact. These GDP characteristics represent the difficulties for sustainability to be realised. So, in this report, we wish to suggest a new indicator for the analysis of sustainability, with particular regards to the human wellbeing. This new indicator is based on the exergy analysis of dissipation and irreversibility. Moreover, energy is one of the fundamental drivers of the development, and of the economic growth. Last, in industrialized countries, the management of CO2 emissions represents one of the present imperative issues. Indeed, improving the energy efficiency and its rational use is one of the key economic strategies in order to achieve the target of moving towards a more sustainable development. The suggested indicator allows us to consider all these requests, for the progress towards a sustainable development, resulting a very interesting thermoeconomic quantity to be used by decision-makers. The Alessandria district is analysed as a case study.