Multiple criteria assessment of low-carbon energy technologies at the European level

The transition to a low-carbon economy should begin, ideally, at the local level where energy consumption takes root. Significant opportunities for electricity production are available within city borders, and these call for the involvement of local authorities in policy matters. Additionally, development planning and decision making in the energy sector necessitates for the participation of relevant stakeholders, such as government authorities and electricity producers. Each stakeholder group, however, has its own objectives, priorities, and preferences. Nevertheless, the multiple, often conflicting views of stakeholders have to be taken into account in order to reach a consensus as well as to ensure transparency in the process. Moreover, in selecting low-carbon energy technologies for electricity production, there is a variety of evaluation criteria, ranging from economic costs to environmental impacts, for consideration. One method for structuring a multi-actor, multi-objective, and multi-criteria complexity is through a Multiple Criteria Analysis. This research study, which aimed to analyze local stakeholders’ preferences for the evaluation criteria of selected low-carbon energy technologies in electricity production at the European level, made use of such analysis. Moreover, the low-carbon energy technologies in Europe were evaluated from a local stakeholders’ perspective. This study involved a review of sustainability assessment frameworks which revealed the commonly-used criteria and indicators in the urban energy context. The pre-selected indicator set was validated by local stakeholders. Majority of the respondents agreed with the retention of the evaluation criteria and indicators. As such, this study concludes that the indicator set fulfilled the basic principles, such as relevance, comprehensiveness, and non-redundancy. The final indicator set was applied in the elicitation of weighting preferences. The survey-based weighting elicitation process made use of an integrated weighting methodology which combines two approaches: an initial ranking and a series of pair-wise comparisons. The initial ranking allowed the stakeholders to be familiarized with the process, while the pair-wise comparisons enabled them to provide their preferences verbally, numerically, and graphically. The results of the elicitation process show how local stakeholders highly value economic, environmental, and social criteria, such as carbon emissions, levelised costs, ecosystem damages, mortality and morbidity, resilience to climate change, radioactive waste, accident fatalities, employment generation, and fuel use. Local stakeholders show implied responsibility towards local environmental protection, human health and safety, and economic and employment returns. The low-carbon energy technologies were assessed based on the weights for each criterion as well as on the results of experts’ judgment impact assessment. The weighted summation rule by aggregating final indexes per low carbon technology was applied. This study concludes that wind off-shore, solar photovoltaic, hydropower, wind-onshore, and Gas Turbine Combined Cycle are the top-five low-carbon energy technologies that best reflect local stakeholders’ preferences. As this research study enabled the mapping – albeit limited - of local stakeholder’ preferences, it is recommended that future studies should focus on a wider scale as well as on in-depth analysis. This study mapped only the preferences of three broad local stakeholder groups, namely public authorities, energy industry actors, and technical professionals. It would be substantive to map the preferences of distinct local stakeholder groups within the urban energy context.