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sound evaluation of energy systems grew significantly. Sustainable development claims that at least the economic, ecological and social impacts of an activity are considered equally. 1 For sustainable development within energy supply energy systems have to be looked at from different disciplines as to incorporate all the consequences brought along with their implementation. This approach makes an evaluation of energy systems more complex. In addition to that participation of stakeholders becomes more important as energy systems face an increasing opposition of the public. Not only decentralized energy systems like wind power plants have to deal with problems of acceptance. In Germany utilities are struggling with approval processes from local governments as the public offers resistance to the building of new central power plants. Therefore, participation of stakeholders in decision processes of new energy systems is necessary for the success and stability of energy systems. As energy issues are usually complex, dynamic, dealing with uncertainty and different stakeholders, there is a need for new decision tools such as multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA) (Loken07). But how widespread are MCDA methods for energy decisions already? In this paper a review of the recent literature is published to analyse the potential of MCDA for real world applications. A classification is presented to indicate trends and challenges. Multi criteria decision making or analysis is a generic term used for methods that help people to make decisions in cases when there is a trade off between conflicting criteria (Loken07). Multi criteria methods have been developed in the discipline of “Operations Research” which is part of applied mathematics. Literature offers different appellations that are sometimes used simultaneously. Therefore, a short description of differences is given below. There are two main groups of multi criteria methods that are distinguished (Zimmermann1991): • In Multi Criteria Decision Analysis or Making (MCDA/MCDM) there exist a limited amount of previously known alternatives that have to be evaluated and ranked. Depending on the method applied a complete or a partial ranking can be achieved. • In Multi Objective Decision Making (MODM) an optimal solution will be calculated out of a set of unlimited feasible alternatives. The alternatives are not predetermined but instead a set of functions is optimised subject to certain conditions. Here the best solution is sought. Since the origin of Multi Criteria Decision Making in the 1960s two main schools have evolved that underline different approaches and methods: • “European School” with the approach of “Multi Criteria Decision Aid”(MCDA) • “American School” with the approach of “Multi Criteria Decision Making” (MCDM) The principle of MCDM is based on clear preferences of an unspecified decision maker. A clear structured optimisation problem will be solved with a mathematical process (Omann04). MCDA compared to MCDM gives more importance to the process of decision aiding than on 1 There are different approaches available. For further information compare (Kopfmüller00), (Empacher99), (Omann00)
the mathematical process and the final result. With MCDA the European school seeks to give recommendations whereas the American school tries to find an ideal solution (Roy96). Moreover, MCDA looks at the pros and cons of the corresponding alternatives without necessarily presenting a dominant solution. Therefore, the decision aiding process itself is the centre of attention providing an opportunity to learn from the corresponding stakeholders. MCDM works with so called monoistic ethics only. Thus the diversity of ethical approaches within sustainable development cannot be accounted for in the evaluation process. According to Omann MCDM is not regarded as suitable for decision problems in the context of sustainable development (Omann04). In this paper the term MCDA is used in the sense of Multi Criteria Decision Analysis covering both approaches. There are several approaches in the literature that categorize the MCDA methods (Hwang81, Zimmermann91, Polatidis06, Hobbs00). According to Polatidis et al. there are –next to the above mentioned MODM- “Utility or Value based methods”, “Outranking Methods” and others (Polatidis06). Utility based methods rank the alternatives according to an aggregated single value that represents the overall performance of the alternatives. Methods such as multiattribute utility theory (MAUT), multiattribute value theory (MAVT) and the Analytical Hierarchie Proces (AHP) belong to this category. The outranking methods originated in the European school try to find a ranking or partial ranking based on pair wise comparisons. This approach aims at building a binary relation on the set of alternatives (often called an outranking relation). Contrary to the utility or value based approach this relation is not built via a single criterion. Some reasons for the application of MCDA in a decision process are their ability to deal with subjective elements and qualitative criteria. MCDA methods are able to incorporate different perspectives of stakeholders by adding subjective elements such as the weighting of the different evaluation criteria (Omann04). By separating subjective and objective data the decision process becomes more transparent as subjective opinions are clearly communicated and are not hidden in underlying assumptions. Moreover, MCDA has the opportunity to incorporate qualitative as well as quantitative criteria. Especially ecological and social criteria are difficult to measure so that through relative scales expert opinion can be quantified and included in the decision process. On the other hand, trying to incorporate all these aspects (subjective judgments, stakeholder participation, modeling of the complex environment, sustainability issues) in one method, can lead to a bulky approach, thus making it too complex to handle. The risk is that the decision maker cannot follow the method and feels uncomfortable with the solution. The main challenge is therefore to build a scientifically valid, thus manageable method (Omann04) 2 . In the next chapter preceding reviews are introduced and the methodology in this article discussed. In chapter three the literature review according to the corresponding criteria is presented. In the final chapter main finding, trends and challenges are summarized. 2. FORMER REVIEWS AND METHOD 2 For more detailed information on MCDA compare (Figueira05)
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