The Countries’ technological levels

The fundamental requirements of sustainable development introduce a multidimensional approach to the analysis of the technological level of the countries, based on the balance of different needs. Indeed, the economic sustainability requires that manufactured capital, natural capital, human capital, and social capital must be all maintained over the long term, while the conservation of ecosystems and natural resources is essential for sustainable economic production and intergenerational equity. Moreover, the social equity is the basic element of development, and is interrelated with environmental sustainability. All these consideration are related to the technological development and its evaluation in relation to the processes used in the production activities. In this paper the anergy percentage is suggested as a suitable indicator of the level of the technological development, in relation to the optimized use of energy. This quantity, which is not a universal indicator in relation to the environmental impact, can be used for economic and socio-political evaluation. As a matter of fact, the anergy percentage is related to the exergy lost during a process, so it can give information on the optimization level obtained by a technology or it can be useful to compare different technologies among them.