A local-level, multiple criteria decision aid for climate protection

Abstract

Climate change is one of the global challenges of the twenty-first century. On international, European and national level, climate protection measures are discussed and reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions are defined. The local level has a decisive role for putting these targets into practice. Local authorities can be considered as key actors for climate protection as they are the closest political body to citizens. They have a large scope of action including, for example, improved energy efficiency and the use of renewable energies. For the implementation of climate protection, different complex decisions have to be taken considering financial, ecological, political and social criteria. For decision aiding in this context, outranking methods emerge well suited because the decision-makers in politics and administration face incomplete information and they have to choose between alternatives that are not always directly comparable and where no dominating solution that fulfils best all criteria can be identified. A survey among 1,100 municipalities in a German Land allowed evaluating the current status of climate protection on the local level and quantifying the importance of different decision criteria. The article characterises four “moments of decision” during the preparation and implementation of climate protection strategies. It presents a standardised procedure to accompany decision-makers in this context and a generalised criteria tree. These are applied in a case study using the outranking method PROMETHEE for the choice of the retrofitting concept for a primary school.