Toward sustainable long-term energy planning for cities: An economic and environmental assessment of sustainable fuel technologies in the city of Donostia-San Sebastián

Most of the population around the world live in urban areas. Thus urban policies and investments made by city policy makers aim to establish objectives based on social concerns such as fighting climate change. Long-term energy plans oriented toward sustainability are necessary means to justify decisions and investment plans.

The transition to a decarbonized economy is a complex process that entails mixing multiple methodologies. The present work develops a sustainability modeling exercise for a city (Donostia-San Sebastián) located in the Basque Country (Spain) to discuss different explorations of the sustainability dimension via energy scenarios. By means of a life cycle assessment (LCA) rationale, evaluating metrics derived from it is possible to widen the sustainability assessment when discussing energy planning scenarios at the city level. The results obtained show that the adaptations proposed for methodologies based on an LCA approach have been effective for the comparison of energy transition scenarios of cities.