Vera and Langlois’ article examines and summarizes the creation and implementation of a set of indicators for energy goals to supplement the sustainable development goals/indicators already in place. The international agencies involved included two branches of the United Nations, two European Union Agencies, and the International Energy Agency ( as a part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). These parties recognized that at the time there were an estimated 1.7 billion people globally that did not have access to electricity. These organizations believed this lack of energy greatly limited the socio economic development capabilities in limited energy areas. Therefore a need for energy creation exists.

The article goes on to explain sustainable energy development indicators are desired to “provide an analytical tool for assessing current energy production and use patterns at a national level.”  In 1995, prior to the aforementioned partnership, the UN created Indicators for Social Development (ISDs) which contained three energy related indicators (of the 58). These international agencies began partnering in 2002 to complement the ISDs. In 2005 the report was released containing 30 Energy Indicators for Sustainable Development (EISDs) along with methodologies for implementation and other guidelines for each indicator. Additionally, case studies were released testing and implementing the EISDs.

The paper extensively outlined the history leading up EISDs and examined the indicators individually along with explaining their classification system; however, this paper does not contribute any original research or idea except for a single concluding sentence assessing the EISDs to be an “effective tool for policy makers.” It does, however, a very good job at explaining the various events that lead to the EISDs and detailing each indicator in a straightforward fashion.

Personally, I began reading the article with no knowledge the EISDs existed, and finished feeling I had a pretty broad understanding of the report’s content and its purpose. The article was detailed while still being easy to read even by those from outside the field.  As I am going to focus a lot on sustainable energy in my thesis, I think this resource will be good to compare different technologies to the sustainable energy indicators and give guidelines on how to implement them in the community.