A systematic approach for assessment of renewable energy using analytic hierarchy process

Abstract

Background: Cities around the world face a great challenge in establishing a long-term strategy for the development of energy alternatives. Previous research tried to identify renewable energy across many different cities. Because each city has unique characteristics in terms of geographic and environmental conditions, population, economic development, and social and political environment, the most sustainable energy source for one city might be the least sustainable for another. Methods: This research develops and implements a systematic approach to assess renewable energy and identify the energy alternatives for a city using the analytic hierarchy process. The methodology integrates experts' input and data analytics and helps decision-makers form long-term strategies for renewable energy development. Results: The decision support system is applied to three cities, Chengdu in China, Eskisehir in Turkey, and Chicago in the United States of America. Results show that improving energy efficiency and development of solar and wind energy are the most preferred energy alternatives whereas nuclear and hydroelectric are the least preferred energy alternatives for these three cities. Conclusions: The results of this study are in line with decades of research and development in energy alternatives and show a clear direction for the future development of energy alternatives around the world. There are differences in the rankings of energy alternatives for different cities, indicating that it is necessary to apply the decision support system developed in this study to help form customized energy strategies for cities with unique characteristics.

Assessment of Energy Systems Using Extended Fuzzy AHP, Fuzzy VIKOR, and TOPSIS Approaches to Manage Non-Cooperative Opinions

“…Figure 1. Flow chart for the energy systems selection decision procedure The criteria set used for multi criteria GDM, conducted for selection of energy systems [6,13,15,18,22,24,26,29,32,36,40] in different countries, is given in Table 1. Table 2 shows the scores used for the assessment of fuzzy linguistic terms.…”

“…Developing alternative energy sources to fossil fuels has several challenges. These alternative sources are mainly solar, wind power, biomass, nuclear, ocean waves, and hydroelectric power [6]. In the long-term, predicting the most beneficial energy alternatives is very important, many factors such as population, geographic restrictions, societal needs, and politics are involved in decision-making.…”

Energy efficiency in an integrated agro-ecosystem within an acidic soil area of the Mekong Delta, Vietnam

“…The study approach is based on the integration of resources in agriculture to create a closed ecological system, which is aimed at optimizing the efficiency of materials and energy use, i.e. maximizing the use of renewable energy resources and minimizing nonrenewable resources [27]. Utilization of waste and material flow recycling is proposed for creation of a zero emission system.…”

Energy efficiency in an integrated agro-ecosystem within an acidic soil area of the Mekong delta, Vietnam

“…The study approach is based on the integration of resources in agriculture to create a closed ecological system, which is aimed at optimizing the efficiency of materials and energy use, i.e. maximizing the use of renewable energy resources and minimizing non-renewable resources [27]. Utilization of waste and material flow recycling is proposed for creation of a zero emission system.…”