The thermodynamic efficiency and the environmental sustainability of selected processes that deliver gaseous energy carriers (natural gas, syngas from coal gasification, and hydrogen from steam reforming of natural gas and alkaline electrolysis) is explored by means of a multi-criteria, multi-scale approach based on four methods: material flow accounting, energy analysis, exergy analysis, and emergy synthesis. The average energy and exergy conversion efficiencies of syngas (76% and 75%, respectively) are found to be higher than those for hydrogen (64% and 55%). However, coal-to-syngas conversion generates a significant amount of solid waste, which should be dealt with carefully. In addition, the material intensity is much higher for syngas (e.g. abiotic MI = 768 g/g) than for natural gas and hydrogen (21 and 39 g/g, respectively), indicating a higher load on the environment. On the other hand, the emergy intensity (transformity) for syngas (5.25 x 10(4) seJ/J) is shown to be lower than for hydrogen (9.66 x 10(4) SeJ/J), indicating a lower demand for global environmental support. Therefore, material intensities and transformities offer two complementary pieces of information: transformities account for the "memory" of the environmental resources that were used up in the past for the production of the inputs, whereas MIs are strictly calculated within the time frame of the life cycle of the investigated process. The higher transformity values calculated for pure hydrogen suggest careful and appropriate use of such an energy vector. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.