Selecting renewable energy options: an application of multi-criteria decision making for Jordan

Abstract Renewable energy sources are environmentally friendly and sustainable resources. However, there is no unique renewable energy resource that suits all countries. As such, nations must select the right option ‒ or combination of options ‒ that aligns with their local economic, technical, and environmental circumstances. Such a selection process is usually performed using a decision-making tool based on multi-criteria analysis. This study aims to find the most effective renewable energy option for Jordan by soliciting experts’ opinions under several criteria and sub-criteria. The collected responses of experts from the energy field were analyzed using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP). The AHP model used in the study consisted of four criteria, eleven sub-criteria, and four renewable energy alternatives. The results indicate that the technical criterion had the highest weight of 53.6% as compared to the environmental criterion which came second with a weight of 29.0% followed by geographical and socioeconomic criteria which have the lowest weights of 11.3% and 6.0%, respectively. The results reveal that under the technical criterion a high rank has given to maturity of the technology followed by availability of know-how with a weight of 0.875 and 0.125, respectively. The sequence of the preferable options based on the study results was: wind energy with 51.9%, followed by the solar energy option with 31.3%, and finally biomass and hydropower with 10.5% and 7.1%, respectively. Sensitivity analysis was performed and showed that the renewable energy options are not sensitive to the technical or environmental criteria, while they were slightly sensitive to the geographical and socioeconomic criteria.