Multi-criteria analysis of energy technologies in electricity, heat and transport sectors

Abstract

Lithuanian energy policy is oriented towards a more sustainable energy future. There are several available energy technologies in electricity generation, heat generation in buildings and transport sector. These technologies need to be assessed and compared by taking into account economic, environmental and social criteria. The best technologies should be selected and promoted by policy tools. Comparative assessment of these technologies can be achieved by multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods which are the celebrated techniques employed for suchlike assessments and can by applied for this task as provides assessment of technologies based on quantitative, qualitative indicators and also allows to tackle with uncertainties when ranges of values for indicators are available. The aim of this paper is to apply multi-criteria decision making techniques for the comparative assessment and ranking of energy technologies in electricity, heat and transport sectors. The multi–criteria decision method TOPSIS was employed for the multi-criteria analysis of the main energy technologies.