Intergenerational design criteria

Proposed by sustainability economics author and commentator Andrew Simms, published today in The Guardian (here):

• Employment and broader economic return on investment - how much value to the broader economy does investment in different technologies bring; in other words, what is its economic multiplier effect?
• Environmental return on investment - how efficiently does an investment lower carbon emissions and minimise other toxic pollutants and contribute to a healthy environment?
• Energy return on investment - how much energy is generated for the amount of money invested to produce that energy?
• Security return on investment - how much does the technology contribute to domestic energy security and what other security risks does it carry?
• Transition return on investment - how does it contribute, comparatively to the speed and scale of deployment of low carbon energy generating capacity?
• Conviviality return on investment - the degree to which a technology can be responsive to and supportive of a society’s or a community’s own vision and pathway for its development, and that of future generations.