A method for evaluating and selecting renewable and non-renewable energy technologies

Rahim Khoie

International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management, 2005, vol. 5, issue 2/3, 203-229

Abstract: This paper offers a simple method of evaluating the existing renewable and non-renewable energy technologies. The evaluation method is based on the weights given to the importance of six selection criteria: the economic viability; the conversion efficiency; the present level of the technological development; the environmental impacts; the after-production clean-up cost; the renewability and abundance of the source. This paper also outlines the main shortcomings of the energy technologies, based on which they are rated. These ratings together with the weights assigned to the selection criteria produce normalised scores for each technology which are then used for comparison. The existing energy technologies are evaluated from five different points of view, in which the importance of (the weights given to) the economic viability and the environmental impacts of the technologies are varied. The results show that in a society that assigns the highest importance to the economics of the energy production technologies, the non-renewable sources are the most attractive, but become less desirable, when the environmental impacts of the technologies are given any weight. In particular, even with a moderate weight (of two out of a maximum weight of four) given to the environmental impacts, the renewable technologies, especially solar thermal concentrator has become the technology of choice.

Keywords: renewable energy; non-renewable energy; energy technologies; technology evaluation; environmental impact; solar energy; photovoltaic; technology selection; solar power. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=6850 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijetma:v:5:y:2005:i:2/3:p:203-229

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().