Application of the analytic hierarchy process to evaluate the regional sustainability of bioenergy developments

This paper presents the application of the AHP (analytic hierarchy process) method to evaluate bioenergy developments regarding their regional sustainability in a case study area (Tayside and Fife/Scotland). Achieving regional sustainable bioenergy generation is challenging due to the complexity of this sector and the multidimensionality of the sustainability goal. The paper presents a complete and comprehensive AHP application by taking account of two different scenarios and their alternatives, C&I (criteria and indicators) and preferences of bioenergy experts. Although, case-specific C&I weighting and performance assessments are required to make this study valuable for similar decision making situations, the rather generic scenarios allow elements of this study to be transferred to a wide range of decision making situations within the energy and particularly the bioenergy field. The detailed analysis of results, including analyses by end node C&I and by alternatives, demonstrates that decentralized bioenergy generation should be preferred to achieve regional sustainable bioenergy generation in the case study area. Sensitivity analyses explore variations of the subjective judgments made on the different levels of the AHP hierarchies. The results of the sensitivity analyses show that all results can be considered robust.