Emergetic ternary diagrams and emergy accounting are used as support tools for decision making. The graphical representation of emergy analysis permits to compare systems, products and services taking into account the environmental support, to evaluate improvements and to follow systems performance with time. The graphic tool is versatile and can ce applied to represent the performance of products, processes and even countries, within a given period or along the time. To illustrate the use of emergetic ternary diagrams to support decision making, examples taken from the literature were employed. It is shown that the diagram properties help evaluating systems efficiency, their dependence on renewable and non renewable resouces and on environmental services to absorb pollutants. With the aid of emergetic ternary diagrams, the interactions between systems and between these systems and the environment can be readly verified and evaluated.
Emergy; decision making; graphic tool; sustainability indices; ternary diagrams
