SUSTAIN as a universal scoring tool for assessing sustainability development goals in African energy initiatives

Sustainability assessment has become an essential component of evaluating chemical methods and processes, requiring tools that deliver comprehensive and multi-dimensional evaluations. This manuscript introduces SUSTAIN, a novel and user-friendly tool designed to assess the sustainability of methods, processes and initiatives across environmental, social, and economic dimensions. Its core assessment framework is based on the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs). By evaluating data related to key themes such as resource efficiency, energy use, emissions, waste generation, and social impact, and mapping this information onto the SDGs, SUSTAIN provides a dynamic platform to support informed decision-making for researchers, industry professionals, and policymakers. The tool uniquely evaluates the contribution to each of the United Nations' SDGs, offering a structured analysis of their potential to advance or hinder global sustainability efforts. This paper presents the tool's conceptual framework, including its SDG-based assessment methodology, and illustrates its practical application through real-world examples, and freely available software (bit.ly/SUSTAIN2025). To demonstrate its versatility, SUSTAIN was applied to evaluate three major energy access initiatives: Power Africa, SE4All, and climate finance initiatives. The initiatives received normalized percentage scores of 50.00, 85.29, and 82.35, respectively, reflecting their overall alignment with the SDGs on a scale from 0 to 100. This quantitative comparison highlights the tool's utility in benchmarking sustainability performance and guiding strategic decision-making towards more sustainable development pathways.