Decision-making analysis to improve public participation in strategic energy production management

Environmental challenges decisions are often characterized by complexity, irreversibility, and uncertainty. Much of the complexity arises from the multiple-use nature of goods and services, difficulty in monetary valuation of ecological services and the involvement of numerous stakeholders. From this point of view, the objective of this paper is to propose a multicriteria methodological approach based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process methodology (AHP) in order to examine the scope and feasibility of AHP integrated with public participation approach. The main goal is to incorporate the prioritization criteria for the assessment of various energy policies for power alternatives, and evaluate these policies against these criteria. The three types of energy selected are: electricity production from wind farms, thermal power plants, and nuclear power plants. The results show that our model can help in the decision-making process and increase the transparency and the credibility of the process including tangibles and intangibles attributes.