Can an Environmental Indicator valid both at the local and global scales be derived on a thermodynamic basis?

Environmental considerations are becoming an essential part of any energy conversion assessment: the concept of "environmental impact" has substantially evolved in the last decade, from a pure "assessment of ecological damage" (pollution) to a more complex and omnicomprehensive, but at the same time more detailed, examination of the local and global implications of the interactions of anthropic processes with the biosphere at large. This paper proposes an Environmental Indicator derived strictly on thermodynamic concepts and defines a procedure for its application to both local and global scales in a rationally sound and convenient fashion. The new indicator is the extended exergy cost, ee(c), and is a measure of the primary (exergy) resources embodied in a material or immaterial product. It is shown that such an El can successfully include the "externalities" (Labor, Capital and Environmental Remediation costs) that affect the planning of anthropic energy conversion systems, and that it can also be employed to assess the evolutionary patterns of natural systems. Some conceptual examples of application are provided to demonstrate that eec is indeed a useful tool for the quantification of real -i.e., resource based-environmental costs and for their proper internalization in both engineering and system studies. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.