Multi-criteria decision analysis and cost–benefit analysis of alternative scenarios for the power generation sector in Greece

This paper examines four mutually exclusive scenarios for the expansion of the Greek electricity system developed by official authorities and representing alternative views on meeting electricity demand. The aim is to encompass all positive and negative side-effects characterizing the electricity generation technologies assumed to participate in each scenario and emphasis is given to the particular role of renewable energy sources which represent a major differentiating factor between them. The calculation of economic, technical and environmental performances of the examined scenarios for the year 2010 shows that electricity planning is a complicated task since improvements in one policy target are accompanied by losses in others. In order to resolve this conflict, the scenarios are comparatively evaluated with two decision support techniques, multicriteria decision analysis and cost–benefit analysis, which are capable of broadening the strict boundaries of a financial analysis while avoiding intuitive solutions that are often applied in practice. Following the two completely different evaluation approaches, it is confirmed that the scenario assuming the highest penetration of renewable energy sources is the best compromise configuration for the Greek power generation sector.