Comprehensive Option Assesment - UNEP

Module 2: Comprehensive Options Assesment Stages
Source: ESMAP & BNWPP, 2003: 105
The Advisory Group, with the assistance of the Study Team, establishes which of the alternative plans it prefers using criteria that may be similar to (or
broader than) the criteria applied to assess the individual options. For example, criteria may include the share of benefits and costs between regions,
or broader criteria related to national food security, national or regional energy security, and aggregate implications for poverty alleviation and
environmental impacts.
Equity is an important consideration in comparing alternative plans. An analysis of equity impacts shows how the various benefits, cost streams, and
risks are distributed among the stakeholders as a proportion of the total expected benefits, costs, and risks. This allows redesign of the intervention in
order to arrive at a socially acceptable distribution of costs, benefits, and risks. Often, the assessment of such risks is already done in the evaluation of
individual options, but is undertaken again in comparing alternative plans at a deeper level of analysis.
shows two examples from Canada that discuss building portfolios and evaluating alternative plans based on these portfolios. They show the
contrast between a more comprehensive approach to assessing demand-supply options to build portfolios, and a more generic approach to building
and assessing portfolios. The power system in Ontario was nuclear-dominant, but had diversified generation sources. The power system in Quebec,
on the other hand, was almost totally hydro, and the provincial utility at the time was seeking to evaluate other renewable options and specifically
introduce wind-generation.
Comprehensive Options Assessment for sustainable development of infrastructure
Training Manual
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