Conclusion and policy implications
This paper proposes a new framework for assessing the mix of energy sources for generating electricity in Iran from the perspective of sustainable development. A group fuzzy ANP model is used to assess and compare six different competing energy options against various economic, technical, social and environmental criteria. In order to address the uncertainties and imprecisions inherent in this complex decision making problem, fuzzy linguistic assessment variables are utilized in the pairwise comparison process. Compared to the traditional approaches for assessing electricity generation mix, the proposed framework has several advantages: First, this framework provides a more comprehensive picture of influencing factors in energy mix assessment by simultaneously accounting for multiple evaluation criteria from different perspectives. This study brings together a broad range of factors that have been scattered across many studies, along with some factors that are idiosyncratic for the context of Iran. Second, this framework enables to taking the complex interrelationships among criteria into account. Third, adopting fuzzy logic in evaluations by employing linguistic variables enables handling uncertainties in the process of decision-making. Fourth, the proposed framework allows for incorporating the judgments of multiple decision makers and to systematically integrate them to come up with an assessment that represents the group’s preferences.
