Sustainable development has become an important part of international and national approaches to integrate economic, environmental, social and ethical considerations so that a good quality of life can be enjoyed by current and future generations for as long as possible. However, nowadays sustainable development is threatened by industrial pollution emissions which cause serious environmental problems. Due to a lack of adequate quantitative models for environmental policy analysis, there is a strong need for analytical models in order to know the effects of environmental policies. In the present paper, a goal programming model, based on an environmental/input-output linear programming model, is developed and applied to the Spanish economy. The model combines relations between economic, energy, social and environmental effects, providing valuable information for policy-makers in order to define and examine the different goals that must be implemented to reach sustainability. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.