Renewable Energy Problems: Exploring the Methods to Support the Decision-Making Process (original) (raw)
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Review of Multi-Criteria Decision Making Methods for Renewable Energy Planning
2016
Bioenergy schemes are multi-faceted and complex by nature, with many available raw material supplies and technical options and a diverse set of stakeholders holding a raft of conflicting opinions. To develop and operate a successful scheme there are many requirements that should be considered and satisfied. This paper provides a review of those academic works attempting to deal with problems arising within the bioenergy sector using multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods. These methods are particularly suitable to bioenergy given its multifaceted nature but could be equally relevant to other energy conversion technologies. Related articles appearing in the international journals from 2000 to 2010 are gathered and analysed so that the following two questions can be answered. (i) Which methods are the most popular? (ii) Which problems attract the most attention? The review finds that optimization methods are most popular with methods choosing between few alternatives being used in 44% of reviewed papers and methods choosing between many alternatives being used in 28%. The most popular application area was to technology selection with 27% of reviewed papers followed by policy decisions with 18%.
Selecting an Appropriate Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Technique for Renewable Energy Planning
Energy Sources, Part B: Economics, Planning, and Policy, 2006
This article develops a methodological framework to provide insights regarding the suitability of multi-criteria techniques in the context of renewable energy planning. The second section presents main characteristics of the particular decision-making process. The third section presents the main multi-criteria analysis methods, and the fourth section reveals the requirements of the techniques for renewable energy planning and the main attributes under which these methods should be evaluated. Subsequently, in the fifth section, a comparative matrix is created with the various appropriate multi-criteria techniques and their performance. Finally in the sixth section, we present our conclusions.
Energies, 2018
The measurement of sustainability is actively used today as one of the main preventative instruments in order to reduce the decline of the environment. Sustainable decision-making in solving energy issues can be supported and contradictory effects can be evaluated by scientific achievements of multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques. The main goal of this paper is to overview the application of decision-making methods in dealing with sustainable energy development issues. In this study, 105 published papers from the Web of Science Core Collection (WSCC) database are selected and reviewed, from 2004 to 2017, related to energy sustainability issues and MCDM methods. All the selected papers were categorized into 9 fields by the application area and into 10 fields by the used method. After the categorization of the scientific articles and detailed analysis, SWOT analysis of MCDM approaches in dealing with sustainable energy development issues is provided. The widespread applica...
Proceedings of the World Renewable Energy Congress – Sweden, 8–13 May, 2011, Linköping, Sweden, 2011
The increasing environmental concerns and energy issues required for a sound design of decision patterns increased the parameters to be considered in deciding and developing an efficient energy strategy through the optimisation of support schemes for renewable energy technology. The correct identification and evaluation of the decision making parameters leads amongst others to correct political decisions for maximising the benefit of investment cost, social and environmental gains and improvement of technologies. The paper is focussed in analysing the parameters to be used in a Multiple Criteria Decision Making method and in suggesting a ranking scale for the parameters to be ued in drafting their weights. Fourteen parameters were selected and analysed. The analysis is contacted through literature review, personal communication with key personnel and through questionnaires.
Sustainability
The global increase in renewable energy initiatives has been followed by the need to include the social impact of any project as a core element. Significant challenges for renewable energy development include uncertainty in assessing social impacts at local scales, participation and social acceptance. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) approaches have been widely used in energy planning to address these challenges. This article reviews how social criteria and participation mechanisms have been incorporated into decision-making processes for renewable energy projects. A total of 184 articles were analyzed. A total of 490 indicators that estimated social impacts were identified and organized into nine criteria: employment, social acceptance, social development, health impact, governance, visual impact, knowledge and awareness, cultural value and social justice. Most research included analytical hierarchy process methodologies, and the articles were geographically concentrated in ...
Review on multi-criteria decision analysis aid in sustainable energy decision-making
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2009
Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods have become increasingly popular in decision-making for sustainable energy because of the multi-dimensionality of the sustainability goal and the complexity of socioeconomic and biophysical systems. This article reviewed the corresponding methods in different stages of multi-criteria decision-making for sustainable energy, i.e., criteria selection, criteria weighting, evaluation, and final aggregation. The criteria of energy supply systems are summarized from technical, economic, environmental and social aspects. The weighting methods of criteria are classified into three categories: subjective weighting, objective weighting and combination weighting methods. Several methods based on weighted sum, priority setting, outranking, fuzzy set methodology and their combinations are employed for energy decision-making. It is observed that the investment cost locates the first place in all evaluation criteria and CO 2 emission follows closely because of more focuses on environment protection, equal criteria weights are still the most popular weighting method, analytical hierarchy process is the most popular comprehensive MCDA method, and the aggregation methods are helpful to get the rational result in sustainable energy decision-making.
Selecting the optimal renewable energy using multi criteria decision making
Journal of Business Economics and Management, 2013
Renewable energies are well-known as one of the most important energy resources not only due to limited other energy resources, but also due to environmental problems associated with air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions. Renewable energy project selection is a multi actors and sophisticated problem because it is a need to incorporate social, economic, technological, and environmental considerations. Multi criteria decision making (MCDM) methods are powerful tools to evaluate and rank the alternatives among a pool of alternatives and select the best one. COPRAS (COmplex PRoportional ASsessment) is an MCDM technique which determines the best alternative by calculating the ratio to the ideal solution and the negative ideal solution. On the other hand, analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is widely used in order to calculate the importance weights of evaluation criteria. In this paper an integrated COPRAS-AHP methodology is proposed to select the best renewable energy project. In order to validate the output of the proposed model, the model is compared with five MCDM tools. The results of this paper demonstrate the capability and effectiveness of the proposed model in selecting the most appropriate renewable energy option among the existing alternatives. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Yazdani-Chamzini, A.; Fouladgar, M. M.; Zavadskas, E. K.; Moini, S. H. H. 2013. Selecting the optimal renewable energy using multi criteria decision making, Journal of Business Economics and Management 14(5): 957-978. JEL Classification: O13, C02, C44, C54. Downloaded by [Vilnius Gedimino Tech University] at 02:16 15 July 2015 A. Yazdani-Chamzini et al. Selecting the optimal renewable energy using multi criteria decision making
Use of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis for Energy Planning
2015
This paper uses a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to examine tradeoffs in electricity generation technologies on the basis of cost, greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, and land use. Using a life cycle basis, the analysis compares electricity produced from coal, natural gas, nuclear energy, hydropower, solar energy via photovoltaics, solar energy via concentrating solar technology, onshore wind, offshore wind, geothermal energy and biomass. Attributional lifecycle analysis values for overall water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions associated with each generation technology are used, along with the levelized cost of electricity and levelized avoided cost of electricity' as metrics for cost, and generation weighted land-use efficiency values for evaluation of land-footprint. Two objective scoring methods are used to determine whether scoring methodology influences the results of the MCDA. The results are consistent under the two scoring schemes, indicating that the results are robust to different objective methods of evaluation under an MCDA framework. Different weighting alternatives for determining the relative importance of the four objective functions are also considered to determine the sensitivity of the results to stakeholder preferences. If a heavy emphasis was given to costs, geothermal energy tends to dominate because of its lowest levelized cost of electricity. On the other hand, when a low weights is given to costs, wind power and nuclear energy emerge superior under a number of weighting schemes. Lastly, the results from the MCDA methods are compared to a Benefit Cost Analysis (BCA) to test for consistency, and it is found that the optimal solutions are different under the latter due to the high weights that are implicitly given to costs under a BCA. Even after a price on greenhouse gas emissions is factored into the BCA, it favors the technologies with a low levelized cost over ones that have lower greenhouse gas emissions, demonstrating that an MCDA is better at explicitly recognizing tradeoffs and incorporating stakeholder preferences into decision making. Thus, the suitability of MCDA for making more informed, context specific decisions is discussed, and the merits offered by an MCDA in contrast to a BCA are presented. This thesis is a part of a larger project REFRESCH (Researching Fresh Solutions to the Energy/Water/Food Challenge in Resource Constrained Environments), and has been funded by the REFRESCH team, interactions with which have greatly helped me grow my awareness of water-energy issues.
MCDA methods become increasingly popular in energy decision-making due to their capability to deal with complex decision processes, in face of multiple and conflicting evaluation criteria (of technical, economic, environmental and social nature), different stakeholders with different views and preferences, several sources of uncertainty and distinct time frames. Literature reviews with specific focuses on the use of MCDA in energy problems have been reported. Hobbs and Meier (2000) provide a wide review of MCDM methods and energy-environment applications. Greening and Bernow (2004) describe a modeling framework incorporating developments in integrated assessment of energy and environmental issues, and suggest a strategy for developing a set of coordinated policies from varying levels of information about policy attributes and DM’s preferences. Pohekar and Ramachandran (2004) review the application of various MCDM methods in the framework of sustainable energy planning. Løken (2007) provide an overview of some of the most relevant MCDA methods proposed in the literature. Mirakyan and Guio (2013) present a review of methods and tools for integrated energy planning in cities and territories, concluding that the purpose of MCDA methodologies is not just required to define the “right” energy plan but rather to support the understanding of the multi-criteria complex situation that supports interactive planning and learning, helping people to systematically consider, articulate and apply value judgments. The poblems most often dealt with with MCDA approaches are: - Comparison of power generation technologies, involving the appraisal of available primary energy sources and technological options, considering conventional technologies and/or renewable energy technologies. - Formulation and development of energy plans and policies, involving the choices faced by energy planners at the national, regional or local level seeking to identify the most desired one among alternative scenarios, taking into account the public debate on energy policy, energy conservation strategies and energy resource allocation issues. - Selection of energy projects, namely concerning renewable energy investments for electricity generation. - Location decisions, namely focussing on the siting of new wind farms and hydro and thermal power plants, also complemented with choices regarding operational parameters. - Energy efficiency studies, mainly devoted to the evaluation of energy efficiency measures and programs either in technology replacement or building refurbishment.
IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering
The objective of this research is to select the optimum green energy sources (GES) for sustainable energy planning from a given set of alternatives. This study proposes a hybrid model based on SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats) and an integrated Entropy-Technique for Order of preference by Similarity to Ideal solution (TOPSIS) method for optimal GES. SWOT analysis is used to characterize the corresponding criterion of GES alternative. The information collected from the various energy sources related to different criteria for assessing the best alternative is always imprecise in nature. Thus, to reduce the impreciseness in data, entropy method is used, which extracts the precise weight from the available information. Again, TOPSIS method is applied to appraise the relative closeness to the ideal solution. The result shows that solar-photovoltaic is the most suitable sustainable GES, having highest score value evaluated by the integrated methodology. Thereafter, energy satisfaction index shows the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed integrated methodology.