Often questions related to environmental policy are difficult to resolve successfully, because robust solutions depend on accurately balancing the needs of both human and natural systems. To accomplish this end the socioeconomic and environmental effects of policies must be expressed in common terms so that both the contributions of the environment and the contributions of the economy to human well-being are valued fairly. Emergy is an accounting quantity that has the property of expressing all forms of energy in terms of their equivalent ability to do work when used in the system of which they are a part. Based on past studies and a previous report in this series, environmental accounting using emergy has proved to be a method that can be used to objectively value the work of the environment, economy and society by using an energy-based unit, the solar emjoule (sej) and a combined emergy-monetary unit the emdollar (Em$). Emergy tabulates the available energy of one kind required for the production of a product or service i.e., the solar joules used up both directly and indirectly in the past to make the product or service. The unit of emergy is the emjoule, which denotes that the energy has been used in the past in contrast to a joule of available energy that is an energy potential that can be used in the present. What something can do when used within its network is represented by its emergy and not its energy. Thus, energy alone is not a sufficient basis for making policy decisions. This USEPA Project Report contains an emergy evaluation of the State of Minnesota and it includes a guide to the Emergy Analysis methods used to characterize a state within the larger context of its region and nation.

"January 2009." "EPA/600/R-09/002." Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-63).