*6.3. From Decision to Policy Support*

A possible approach to improving the ENsource ESM is the further development of the provisionally derived eco-factors. However, this would contradict the basic idea of ESM, which recommends the use of democratically legitimated target values. Rather than research, a political process is necessary that properly involves science, civil society, and other stakeholders to discuss and finally define such target values for different environmental pressures in a comprehensive and consistent way. As has been pointed out before, the role of science is not to provide normative targets [20]. Nevertheless, science can provide a transparent framework to support an informed discussion on these targets. In that sense, the presented ENsource ESM not only aims at practical decision-support but also at supporting such a political process for developing a consistent set of environmental targets for the necessary transition towards a renewable and sustainable energy supply.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/21/5655/s1, MS Word file S1: ENsource ESM, MS Excel file S2: ENsouce ESM elementary flows, MS Excel file S3: Parameter and modeling.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization and methodology, H.L. and S.L.; life cycle modelling, H.H. and S.L.; writing—original draft preparation, H.L. and S.L.; writing—review and editing, H.L., S.L., H.H., T.V., and I.T.; All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was funded by the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg—Ministry for Science, Research and Art and European Regional Development Fund—Innovation and Energiewende, in the context of the center for applied research "Urban Energy Systems and Resource Efficiency" (ENsource-2, grant number FEIH\_ZAFH\_1248932).

**Acknowledgments:** The authors would like to thank all partners of the ENsource consortium for many fruitful discussions on the issues covered by this article. We particularly acknowledge the energy system scenarios provided by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) based on evaluating the optimization model KomMod.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.
