Sustainability evaluation of power generation technologies using Multi-Criteria Decision Making: The Kenyan case

Kenya expects a high growth in energy demand due to its high demographic and economic growth as well as increasing industrialization. In that regard, the government of Kenya has already shown interest to expand its power supply which includes coal-fired power plants. However, many previous studies conducted to evaluate the Kenyan energy planning scenarios were limited to technical aspect such as dynamic power consumption and demand forecasting; techno-environmental aspect such as low carbon capacity expansion; techno-economic electricity expansion aspect and economic, techno-environmental electricity expansion aspect. The concern of evaluating all the potential Kenyan power options against sustainability dimensions as a whole was not addressed since selecting power technology options has become a multidimensional problem. Therefore, this study aimed at prioritizing Kenyan power technology options using sustainable dimensions: Economic, Social, Environmental and Technical. This research applied Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method which is an interesting tool able to bring together several variables to handle a decision making problem. Hence, energy options were evaluated against the four sustainable dimensions (Economic, Social, Environmental and Technical) combining 17 energy indicators and a hybrid AHP-TOPSIS technique was used for that purpose. Results showed that Solar PV and Wind are the most promising technologies in Kenya. Although CSP has not been privileged by Kenyan policymakers, it ranks among the first-three promising technologies, except for economic scenario raking this option the last. Five different analyzed scenarios (Economic privileged, Technical privileged, Environmental privileged, Social privileged, Equal importance) showed the robustness of Solar PV in the all sustainable dimensions. This study has provided a critical policy contribution to the Kenyan government and energy projects investors by solving the dilemma of technologies prioritization in capacity expansion. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This study prioritized Kenyan power technology options based on sustainable dimensions, evaluating them against economic, social, environmental, and technical factors. Solar PV and Wind emerged as the most promising technologies in Kenya, providing critical policy contributions to the government and energy projects investors.