Abstract:
The use of renewable energy sources (RES) for the production of electric power
brings huge benefits both in terms of environmental protection as well as savings
in non-renewable resources. Nevertheless, the very nature of RES raise technical
and economic problems that create a considerable gap between their potential
capacity and ways to feasibly exploit them. Their many different forms and the
ways in which they may be used have to be carefully examined in order to
evaluate the costs and other technical and environmental factors involved. The
planning and appraisal of sustainable energy projects involve rather complex
tasks. This is due to the fact that the decision making process is the closing link in
the process of analysing and handling different types of information:
environmental, technical, economic and social. Such information can play a
strategic role in steering the decision maker towards one choice instead of
another. Some of these variables can be handled fairly easily by numerical models
whilst others, particularly ones relating to environmental impacts, may only be
adjudicated qualitatively. In many cases therefore, traditional evaluation
methods and the chief economic and financial indicators are unable to deal with
all the components involved in an environmentally valid energy project.
Multicriteria methods provide a flexible tool that is able to handle and bring
together a wide range of variables appraised in different ways and thus offer valid
assistance to the decision maker in mapping out the problem. This paper sets out
the application of a multi-criteria method to Review of Riau Energy Systems
Planning for electricity.
