Ecologically sustainable development is the environmental component of sustainable development. It can be achieved partially through the use of the precautionary principle; if there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to prevent environmental degradation. Also important is the principle of intergenerational equity; the present generation should ensure that the health, diversity and productivity of the environment is maintained or enhanced for the benefit of future generations.
In microeconomics, economic efficiency, depending on the context, is usually one of the following two related concepts: Allocative or Pareto efficiency: any changes made to assist one person would harm another. Productive efficiency: no additional output of one good can be obtained without decreasing the output of another good, and production proceeds at the lowest possible average total cost. These definitions are not equivalent: a market or other economic system may be allocatively but not productively efficient, or productively but not allocatively efficient.
thumb|300px|right|Carte de la zone où s'applique le péage urbain de Londres. thumb|300px|right|Le marquage au sol et un panneau marquent l'entrée dans la zone à Old Street. Le péage urbain de Londres (London congestion charge) est un péage urbain, c'est-à-dire un droit de circulation frappant certaines catégories de véhicules automobiles qui entrent dans le centre-ville. Londres n'est pas la première ville à avoir adopté un péage urbain, mais, en 2005, c'est la plus grande ville à utiliser cette technique.
Fuel efficiency is a form of thermal efficiency, meaning the ratio of effort to result of a process that converts chemical potential energy contained in a carrier (fuel) into kinetic energy or work. Overall fuel efficiency may vary per device, which in turn may vary per application, and this spectrum of variance is often illustrated as a continuous . Non-transportation applications, such as industry, benefit from increased fuel efficiency, especially fossil fuel power plants or industries dealing with combustion, such as ammonia production during the Haber process.