Integrated Fuzzy Multi Criteria Decision Making Approach for Sustainable Energy Technology Selection

Abstract

With the increasing world population and industrial steps taken to meet consumption, the need for energy has increased. Today, the increasing demand for energy of the countries that consider their economic growth has increased their energy consumption. This has led to a global energy crisis. The rapid depletion of energy resources in the world has led countries to look for new resources. The necessity of sustainable energy has made renewable resources a new target. At this point, the selection of the best energy technology becomes important. Hence, this study aims to select the most appropriate sustainable energy technology with multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods. The evaluation criteria with quantitative and qualitative characteristics are determined through a literature survey and with the opinions of industrial experts. The process of calculating the weights of the evaluation criteria and choosing the most appropriate alternative is a decision-making process. Decision-making processes based on the opinions of decision-makers, real-life problems, and their complexity include perceptual differences and uncertainties. Hence, the classical MCDM methods have been extended to fuzzy sets in order to eliminate the uncertainty caused by this perception-based fuzziness. The weights of the evaluation criteria are calculated by fuzzy AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) method. The most appropriate alternative is then selected using among candidate energy technologies with fuzzy VIKOR (Vise Kriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje) method. Finally, a case study is conducted to validate the proposed model. To compare the results, the fuzzy TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method is utilized.