Cities are the most important energy consumers of any country in all energy vector components. Nowadays, Belgrade as a cultural, educational, scientific, administrative, political, and business center of the region with its own structure of production, transportation, services, and urban system, represents significant consumer of different energy forms. Only useful and final energy is delivered to energy consuming sectors of a city. Simulation model MAED was used in this paper to estimate energy demand in city for a long time period. On the basis of energy demand forecast for three major 'energy consumers' (sectors of household/service, industry, and transportation) until 2020, the sustainable development,scenarios' of Belgrade energy system are developed (2005-2010, 2010-2015, 2015-2020). For each 'scenario', the energy systems of primary resources are determined so to satisfy the predicted differences in energy consumption for the mentioned time intervals until 2020. In this case different 'scenarios' are evaluated. The evaluation of 'scenarios' sustainability is obtained by method of multi-criteria analysis. Using energy indices for sustainable development, the following indices are taken into consideration for the assessment of scenario sustainability: economical, social, and environmental. The obtained results can be used by experts in decision-making process. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.