A multi-criteria sustainability assessment approach for energy systems using sustainability triple bottom line attribute
- PDF / 3,057,146 Bytes
- 35 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 81 Downloads / 210 Views
A multi‑criteria sustainability assessment approach for energy systems using sustainability triple bottom line attributes and linguistic preferences Sepehr Hendiani1 · Ebrahim Sharifi1 · Morteza Bagherpour1 · Seyed Farid Ghannadpour1 Received: 20 February 2019 / Accepted: 2 December 2019 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract Regarding the high level of pollution in energy industries, evaluating the current sustainability level in energy systems in developed/developing countries remains a challenge. A sustainable energy system has to proceed simultaneously social, economic and environmental practices with the goal of enhancing the sustainability level in associated systems. The evaluation of sustainability plays an active role in implementation of short- and longterm sustainability practices. This study proposes a novel framework as a benchmark for evaluations of sustainability in energy systems by introducing sixty-five key attributes and thirteen criteria for three pillars of sustainability. Due to the existence of incomplete information and uncertainty in evaluations of sustainability, the linguistic terms are used for expressing the condition of weight and performance rate for every single attribute based on expert judgment in accordance with fuzzy logic. Triangular fuzzy membership functions are also deployed to assign those linguistic judgments with appropriate fuzzy sets. The outputs of the proposed methodology involve a three-level fuzzy computational approach for obtaining the overall energy system’s sustainability index, using Euclidean distance approach for determination of sustainability level, a sieve algorithm for identifying the obstacles of sustainability using fuzzy performance importance index and finally enhancing the overall sustainability level with optimizing the identified weak points. An illustrative case is also resolved using proposed approach to elucidate the wide application of proposed framework in diverse energy systems/companies. The validation of approach is clarified by crisp calculations. The findings of this study will contribute policymakers and practitioners to take appropriate steps toward improvement of energy corporations. Keywords Sustainability · Energy systems · Fuzzy logic · Sustainability index · Performance evaluation
* Morteza Bagherpour [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
S. Hendiani et al.
1 Introduction According to Gallego-Álvarez et al. (2015), the concept of sustainable practicing refers to simultaneous improvement of community interactions, maximizing profitability and minimizing harm to environment. As said by Mani et al. (2016), the word sustainability denotes the capability of the present generation in meeting the current needs with dominancy on social, economic and environment aspects and without compromising the abilities of future generations. For the sake of government strict regulations and competitive advantages, firms and corporations are upgrading their traditional
Data Loading...
