Fuzzy decision support methodology for sustainable energy crop selection

Both strategic and environmental factors make biomass an important energy source and element of sustainable energy policy. The establishment of a reasonable energy crop-mix, indeed, involves various uncertain data. This paper, therefore, offers a multi-criteria decision making framework for prioritization of energy crops based on fuzzy MULTIMOORA method which enables to tackle imprecise information. Given the appropriate energy crop-mix should exhibit both climatic suitability and low environmental pressure, we have defined the indicator set covering respective linguistic and numeric indicators. Accordingly, the set of alternatives were constructed from energy crops suitable for the Lithuanian climate. The fuzzy MULTIMOORA method was employed for data fusion and prioritization. As a result, the prospective species for energy crop-mix were suggested. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.