Project description: Goals

1. How do citizens' and policy-makers' preferences differ among alternative renewable energy scenarios?
   
   
2. Does participation in deliberative processess affect citizens' and policy-makers preferences regarding renewable energy utilisation?
   
   
3. How do different available multi-criteria methods contrast in supporting participatory multi-criteria evaluation?
   
   
4. What are the different qualities and potentials of deliberative processes on the national and on the regional/local level?
   
   

In addressing these research questions, we start from two basic assumptions:

1. The specific regional aspects and socio-economic dimension of renewable energy scenarios are important, but so far have not been systematically taken into account in LCA-studies on renewable energy technologies and in promotion policies;
   
2. MCE provides a useful framework for deliberative processes with stakeholders about social, economic, environmental, and institutional aspects of different energy scenarios.
   
   

As a result, decision-makers at local/regional or national levels will be better prepared to decide about measures for sustainability-oriented energy policies.

The participatory multi-criteria mapping with an evaluation tool for a sustainability-oriented promotion of RETs will, on the one hand, help the political decision-makers (DM) to better understand the relevant issues and, on the other hand, to build a shared understanding between the stakeholders (social learning). The results of our project will provide and integrate tools to:

1. Help the DM to identify and structure key issues for evaluating renewable energy use;
   
   
2. Help the DM to identify the various stakeholders and the characteristics of their interests;
   
   
3. Consider all relevant and available information about the social, environmental, institutional, and economic consequences of renewable energy technologies;
   
   
4. Build an outline analysis which captures the DM's perception of the problem, using common MCE methods (PROMETHEE with fuzzy option, Multi-Criteria Mapping), which incorporate both expert opinion on the potential impacts and their likelihood, and value judgements on the importance of these impacts;
   
   
5. Support meetings between primary stakeholder groups to explore their perceptions and values;
   
   
6. Explore possible consensus via a comprehensive sensitivity analysis (aim for a balanced decision);
   
   
7. Report the process in a way which both explains the rationale behind the final decision and which lets secondary stakeholders explore the decision and understand the reasoning. To make this information available, a content management system* can be applied.
   
   

* Content management systems are groupware applications that allow a group of persons to share documents via a web interface; documents can be checked-in, checked-out, reserved, etc.