Multicriterion issues in energy policymaking

A unique opportunity has been provided, enabling the authors to be able to study policy problems actually faced by decisionmakers in the area of energy resources, and to develop a framework to help them to formulate policy alternatives, express preferences and obtain feedback on the outcomes of these preferences. Several MCDM methods were used to examine whether policies and their outcomes were clear-cut, or whether certain risks would be involved when preferring one policy over another. When decisionmakers were asked to express preferences by direct and indirect approaches, different rankings were obtained, probably as a result of their uncertainty about actually being able to achieve desired goals, and their implicit tradeoff between the desirability of the policy alternative and the likelihood that it could be implemented. A picture of this tradeoff provided a realistic basis upon which policy decisions could be made.