Development of a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making approach for sustainability evaluation of bioenergy production technologies: A case study

Many countries that derive their energy from fossil fuel sources are turning to renewable, and environmentally friendly energy sources to alleviate the growing concerns about global warming and environmental issues. Bioenergy technology is one of the potential alternatives for renewable energy systems. This paper evaluates sustainable bioenergy production technologies through a case study in Egypt. A comprehensive methodology has been developed in which experts and decision makers are able to use linguistic terms to express their opinions and participate in the decision making required to prioritize the dimensions that affect the sustainability of bioenergy production technologies. Identification of the optimum bioenergy production technology and setting its priorities is a difficult task; many dimensions must be taken into account in the evaluation process, such as the environmental, technical, economic, and social dimensions and their sub-indicators. This paper therefore applies a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach that takes into account many conflicting dimensions. In addition, handling of uncertainty was conducted under a neutrosophic environment using trapezoidal neutrosophic numbers (TNNs). Initially, the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method was employed to identify the relative importance of the dimensions and their sub-indicators. Then, Evaluation based on Distance from Average Solution (EDAS) was employed to rank alternatives. An illustrative case considering seven bioenergy production technologies was studied to confirm the feasibility of the suggested approach, and comparisons were performed to show the advantages of the hybrid MCDM techniques. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to prove the validity and stability of the developed framework with variations in weights. The results of this work provide useful information for energy policy decision makers and the results of the case study indicate that the conversion of agricultural and municipal wastes to biogas is the most suitable sustainable bioenergy technology with a weight of 0.996 followed by oil crops to biodiesel technology with weight 0.539.