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Climate change mitigation efforts are in dire need of greener and more versatile fuel alternatives to fossil fuels. Green hydrogen being both renewable and flexible has the potential to offset fossil fuels as the primary fuel source. Countries around the world are planning to develop their green hydrogen industries and accurate potential assessment is vital. This study employed the consolidation of a geographic information system (GIS) and the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) technique of multicriteria decision making (MCDM) for the potential assessment of green hydrogen in southern Thailand, through the selection of suitable sites for solar-based green hydrogen production. Technical, economic, and environmental criteria with 10 sub-criteria were considered for the selection of suitable sites. With 0.243 (24.3%) weight, the distance from protected areas turned out to be the most important sub-criterion, whereas the criterion of elevation, with a 0.017 (1.7%) score, was considered the least important. Southern Thailand is a well-suited area for solar-based green hydrogen production, with a 4302 km2 area of high suitability and a 3350 km2 area of moderate suitability. These suitable areas can be utilized to develop the green hydrogen industry of Thailand, and the method developed can be employed for the assessment of green hydrogen potential in other parts of the country. Studies like these are vital for the development of green hydrogen road maps for Thailand to develop its hydrogen policy and promote investments in the sector.

Conventional hydropower technologies such as dams have been criticized due to their negative environmental effects which have necessitated the development of new technologies for sustainable development of hydropower energy. Hydrokinetic (HK) energy is one such emerging renewable energy technology and, in this study, a theoretical potential assessment was done using a Geographic Information System (GIS) and Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) hydrological model, for the U-Tapao river basin (URB), a major tributary of the Songkhla lake basin (SLB) in southern Thailand. The SWAT was calibrated and validated with SWAT calibration and uncertainty (SWAT-CUP)-SUFI 2 programs using the observed discharge data from the gauging stations within the watershed. The model performance was evaluated based on the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and the coefficient of determination (R2) values, achieving 0.62 and 0.60, respectively, for calibration, and 0.65 and 0.68 for validation which is considered acceptable and can be used to represent flow estimation. The theoretical HK potential was estimated to be 71.9 MW along the 77.18 km U-Tapao river, which could be developed as a renewable and reliable energy source for the communities living around the river. The method developed could also be applied to river systems around the world for resource and time efficient HK potential assessments.

This study assessed suitable smart grid areas for power generation and distribution from solar and small hydro energy resources in Western Uganda by employing the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP) based on geographic information system (GIS) data. This was performed based on the selected economic, environmental, and technical criteria by the authors guided by the experts’ judgements in the weighing process. The main criteria also included various sub-criteria. The sub-criteria of the economic criterion included distance from transmission lines, topography, and distance to roads. The environmental sub-criteria covered land use, sensitive areas, and protected areas. The technical sub-criteria were on distance from demand centers, available potential energy resources (solar and hydro), and climate (rainfall and sunshine). The weights of the main criteria and the sub-criteria were calculated by using the fuzzy AHP. These weights were then used in the GIS environment to determine both the potential for power generation from the solar energy resource and the smart grid suitable areas. According to the weight results, the economic criteria has the highest weight, followed by environmental and technical criteria. The validation of the experts’ judgements for each criterion by comparing the results from fuzzy AHP with AHP confirmed insignificant differences in weights for all criteria. The obtained suitable smart grid areas in Western Uganda have been classified into three parts, that is, the South, North, and Central. Therefore, this is a one-of-a-kind study that, in the authors’ view, will provide the initial insights to the government, policymakers, renewable energy practitioners, and researchers to investigate, map, and embrace decarbonization strategies for the electricity sector of Uganda.

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