Climate change is often cited in renewable energy research by stating motives in environmental, technical, social, and economic categories, which can be linked to metrics that are called key performance indicators (KPIs). Furthermore, these indicators can be set as a target for an optimization model and become optimization objectives. This paper critically reviews the motives, optimization objectives, and KPIs selected in studies of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems with energy storage within the built environment in Nordic countries. A subset of 36 scientific articles, sorted as relevant from a selection of 349, was analyzed to make the review. The results reveal that even when environmental motives are expressed by 75% of the authors, only 8% focus on optimizing with environmental indicators. This imbalance suggests that the environmental problems intended to be addressed with the optimization model could be left unchanged or even exacerbated by the strategic choices made during the energy modeling. In addition to this, there is a lack of consistency in the way the different indicators are calculated, especially for environmental indicators where the impacts of materials and manufacturing were not included. Furthermore, in the economic and technical categories, the economic volatility and peak power motives do not have a matching indicator within the articles analyzed. Therefore, it is recommended to conduct comprehensive optimization studies that align with carefully considered motives.