"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."
The Report of the U.N. Brundtland Commission, Our Common Future, 1987

The Dubrovnik Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems, to be held in 2009 for its 5th consecutive time, is dedicated to the improvement and dissemination of knowledge on methods, policies and technologies for increasing the sustainability of development, taking into account its economic, environmental and social pillars, as well as methods for assessing and measuring sustainability of development, regarding energy, transport, water and environment systems and their many combinations. Sustainability being also a perfect field for interdisciplinary and multi-cultural evaluation of complex system, the Dubrovnik Conference has during the first decade of the 21st century become a significant venue for researchers in those areas to meet, and discuss, share, and disseminate new ideas.

"Then I say the earth belongs to each of these generations during it's course, fully, and in their own right. The 2d. generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the 1st., the 3d. of the 2d. and so on. For if the 1st. could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not the living generation. Then no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of it's own existence."
Thomas Jefferson, Sept.6, 1789

The scope of the Conference will continue to successfully cover the following areas (with examples in parentheses, but not confined to these examples only):

• Sustainability comparisons and measurements methodologies (metrics and indices, multi-criteria analysis, external costs, exergy analysis, footprint methods, emergy)
• Energy policy (security of supply, climate change mitigation, renewable energy support schemes, energy efficiency, employment generating, agriculture and forestry, tax, cap and trade, feed-in, green certificates)
• Transport policy (urban sprawl management, traffic management, road pricing, modal management, alternative fuels, social aspects, rail vs. air)
• Water policy (water management, wastewater management, water reuse, water pricing)
• Environmental policy (waste management, wastewater management, climate change, air pollution policy, water pollution policy, land management, biomass management, social aspects, emission tax, cap and trade)
• Energy system analysis (Energy system analysis models, tools and methodologies, Energy system analysis surveys and results)
• Life cycle assessment, Environmental impact assessment, Eco-design and Eco-labelling
• Energy planning (power system planning, smart energy networks, natural gas system planning, high penetration of renewables, island energy systems, development of energy planning tools, internalizing environmental externalities)
• Transport management (modelling, optimisation, tracking, GPS/mobile systems)
• Renewable energy resources (forest and agricultural biomass, biofuels, biogas, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, wave and ocean)
• Primary energy resources (oil, gas, coal, uranium, thorium, oil peaking)
• Water resources (surface, ground, desalination, etc.)
• Food and agriculture
• Renewable electricity generation systems (biomass, grid and fluidized bed, biofuels, biogas, hydro, wind, photovoltaic, concentrated solar thermal power, geothermal, wave, tide, ocean thermal)
• Thermal power plants (clean coal, fluidized bed, combined cycles)
• Carbon capture and storage/sequestration (oxy-fuel combustion, pre-combustion capture, post-combustion capture, CO2 transport, enhanced oil/gas recovery, enhanced coal bed methane recovery, aquifer storage, bedrock storage, ocean storage, leakage)
• Nuclear energy (new power plant designs, waste, proliferation, policies, acceptance)
• Advanced sustainable energy conversion systems (fuel cells, thermoelectric, thermionic, organic)
• Renewable heat systems (biomass, biofuels, biogas, solar, geothermal, heat pumps)
• Biofuels and biorefineries (biodiesel, bioethanol, second generation biofuels, anaerobic digestion, BTL, biorefineries, vehicles, infrastructure, combustion modelling, sustainability assessment)
• Hydrogen production technologies (stationary, mobile, small applications, electrolysis, reforming, nuclear hydrogen, infrastructure)
• Hybrid and electric vehicles (first generation, plug in, charging, batteries, infrastructure)
• Other alternative fuels (DME, CNG, LPG, resources, production, vehicles, infrastructure)
• Water treatment (methods, health issues, standards, grey water)
• Desalination (distillation, reverse osmosis, energy recovery, discharge management)
• Wastewater treatment (municipal, industrial, agricultural)
• Waste treatment (composting, incineration, landfill, anaerobic digestion, gasification, mechanical biological treatment, mechanical heat treatment, plasma arc waste disposal, pyrolysis, recycling)
• Waste to energy (incineration, landfill gas capture, RDF, cement industry, tyres, combustion modelling)
• Recycling waste (glass, paper, metals, containers, tyres, textiles, batteries, biodegradable waste, separation, financial schemes)
• Pollution modelling (CFD models, air pollution spreading, water pollution spreading, combustion modelling)
• Heat and mass transfer modelling (CFD models, energy efficiency)
• Cogeneration (heat and power, water and power, biofuels and power, transport and energy, food and energy, waste to energy)
• Trigeneration, polygeneration
• Storage (heat storage, hydrogen storage, hydropower as storage, pump storage, compressed air storage, batteries, water storage, biofuels storage, storage optimisation modelling, financial support mechanisms, maximising renewables, optimising load, power market arbitrage, smart energy networks)
• Energy efficiency (industry, agriculture, appliances, smart appliances, load management, rebound effects and mitigation)
• Buildings (passive buildings, smart buildings, green buildings, building standards, heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, cooling, insulation, renewables, heat pumps, load management, storage, sustainable architecture)
• Energy markets (liberalisation, regulation, spot markets, pools, storage, renewables, merging and acquisitions, modelling)
• Emission markets (ETS, carbon, GHG, SOx)
• Employment and energy, transport, water and environment systems (technology development, equipment production, installation, maintenance)
• Technology transfer and development (emerging markets, developing countries, least developed countries, new opportunities)
• Social acceptance (reform, NIMBY, nuclear, wind, hydrogen, hidden and special interests)
• Sustainable tourism (energy systems, transport systems, water systems, environment systems, green hotels)
• Urbanism (urban planning, zoning, transport, modal shift)
• Education in Sustainable Development (Governance, Environmental Awareness, Higher Education in SD, Engineering Education in SD)
• Cooperation for Development (International Development Mechanisms, Clean Development Mechanisms, etc.)