Designing a municipal sustainable energy strategy using multi-criteria decision analysis

The development of more sustainable energy systems is at the top of political agendas around the world. Sustainability is inherently a multi-criteria concept, thus it is appropriate to use multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). This methodology facilitates the intricate decision process by which decision makers must go through to agree on robust long-term alternatives for the sustainable development of existing municipal energy systems taking economic/financial, technical, social and environmental criteria into account. This work presents a methodology to help local authorities with the development of an Energy Action Plan (EAP) towards more sustainable municipal energy systems and, simultaneously, ease the related decision process, by using MCDA. The developed methodology was applied to the municipality of Odemira, Portugal. After several interactions with stakeholders, a set of 16 actions was chosen. Once applied the ELECTRE III method, public lighting, the conversion of the swimming pool water heaters for biomass fueled, the matching of bus and train schedules and the installation of solar photovoltaic systems on the municipal exposition park were the best-ranked actions to be adopted. Also, up to 3 kton of carbon dioxide emissions can be avoided per year if the EAP is implemented, being observed higher benefits at the residential and services sectors. The decision of implementing these actions now stands with the municipality, which should start by implementing the most preferred actions first, and then proceed with the implementation of the subsequent actions, according to financial and human resources availability. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.