Study of environmental sustainability of three municipalities using emergy synthesis

The great urban population growth generates several changes in life style, land use, energy demand and consequent environmental pressure. In this way, studies related to environmental sustainability of urban systems and the availability of natural resources are of major importance. EMergy is considered to be a powerful tool to environmental accounting and measures both natural and human resources to generate products and services. The evaluation through eMergy synthesis of cities, states, nations and its base resources provides large scale perspective to evaluation of environmental areas and can help selection of policies for public benefit. This preliminary study applies the eMergy synthesis to evaluate the sustainability of the cities that compose the ABC Paulista, accounting the local free renewable and the purchased resources that give support to the cities.