A Decision Support Approach to Provide Sustainable Solutions to the Consumer, by Using Electrical Appliances

João Carlos de Oliveira Matias, Ricardo Santos and Antonio Abreu
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João Carlos de Oliveira Matias: DEGEIT—Department of Economics, Management, Industrial Engineering and Tourism, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
Ricardo Santos: GOVCOPP—Research Unit on Governance, Competitiveness and Public Policies, University of Aveiro, 3810-193 Aveiro, Portugal
Antonio Abreu: Instituto Superior de Engenharia de Lisboa (ISEL), 1959-007 Lisboa, Portugal

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: The diversity of energy efficiency appliances existent on the market, with all its different issues, contributes to the existence of several tradeoffs (e.g., energy and water consumption vs. initial investment), which make the consumer’s choices in the market difficult. This becomes even more relevant, by knowing that nowadays a consumer tries to get a solution from the market, with a good compromise between the economic, social and environmental dimensions, and according to its priorities and specific needs, which can be different from other consumers. By adopting a multicriteria approach, combined with an optimization technique, based on evolutionary algorithms (EA), it will be possible to provide a set of sustainable solutions from the market to the consumer, that respects the compromise referred before. In this work, it will be presented an approach to support a decision-agent (DA) (consumer), by performing a set of sustainable choices based on electrical appliances, from the market and suitable to its needs. The method will be applied to a case study, to demonstrate its application. Regarding the obtained solutions, several savings are achieved (electrical and water consumption, CO 2 emissions) by taking into account the consumer’s relative importance, regarding each dimension considered.

Keywords: sustainable development; energy efficiency; electrical appliances; life cycle cost analysis (LCCA); multi-attribute value theory (MAVT); multi-objective optimization; NSGAII (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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