Abstract
By now, the term sustainability suffers from being degenerated into a buzzword resulting in an exceptionally large amount and variety of literature. Likely due to this, the dispersal of descriptions, perspectives, and facets regarding sustainability-assessing methods reveals deficits in terms of theoretical and methodological rigor, novelty, and practical usefulness. Against this background, this article contains an overview of eight selected methods and tools for sustainability assessment. The qualitative review of current research articles concerning energy technologies highlights objectives and purposes, origins, main procedures, fields of application, and examples as well as a critical acclaim for each method. Next to this, several considerations in general such as the role of principles, criteria, and indicators are being illustrated as well as important challenges for measuring sustainability. Thereby, we develop a six-stage model that supports the choice of an appropriate method for sustainability assessment. In doing so, we derive two fundamental principles, namely “content-related” features and “performance-related” features. At the same time, this article underlines the coexistence of various different, highly complex methods, approaches, and perspectives, as well as practical examples to assess sustainability. We evidence an increasing defragmentation and specialization of research on sustainability assessment. Against this background, our findings are likely to foster further theoretical, conceptual, and analytical developments in this research field. This also promotes a customization and the practical value of sustainability assessment methods.