Comparing electricity generation technologies based on multiple criteria scores from an expert group

TL;DR

This study uses multi-criteria decision analysis with expert scores to evaluate and rank 13 electricity generation technologies across sustainability criteria, revealing surprising preferences that could influence global energy policies.

Contribution

It introduces a structured MCDA approach to holistically assess electricity technologies, incorporating expert opinions and validating results against quantitative data.

Findings

Nuclear, gas, and hydroelectric are top-ranked technologies.

Renewables like solar PV and tidal lagoon are ranked lowest.

The approach shows high correlation with quantitative data, supporting its semi-quantitative use.

Abstract

Multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) has been used to provide a holistic evaluation of the quality of 13 electricity generation technologies in use today. A group of 19 energy experts cast scores on a scale of 1 to 10 using 12 quality criteria, based around the pillars of sustainability (society, environment and economy), with the aim of quantifying each criterion for each technology. The total mean score is employed as a holistic measure of system quality. The top three technologies to emerge in rank order are nuclear, combined cycle gas and hydroelectric. The bottom three are solar PV, biomass and tidal lagoon. All seven new renewable technologies fared badly, perceived to be expensive, unreliable, and not as environmentally friendly as is often assumed. We validate our approach by 1) comparing scores for pairs of criteria where we expect a correlation to exist; 2) comparing our qualitative scores with quantitative data; and; 3) comparing our qualitative scores with NEEDS project baseline costs. In many cases, R2>0.8 suggests that the structured hierarchy of our approach has led to scores that may be used in a semi-quantitative way. Adopting the results of this survey would lead to a very different set of energy policy priorities in the OECD and throughout the world.