Title: Measuring economic sustainability of energy use: an ANP-based evaluation of some European Union countries and Turkey

Authors: Aylin Çiğdem Köne; Mónica García-Melón; Pablo Aragonés-Beltrán; Tayfun Büke

Addresses: Department of Economics, Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, 48000 Muğla, Turkey ' INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain ' INGENIO (CSIC-UPV), Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain ' Department of Energy Systems Engineering, Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University, 48000 Muğla, Turkey

Abstract: This paper presents a new methodology for evaluating the economic sustainability of countries' energy systems. The aim of the work is to improve the support tools for policy makers as the scale and complexity of the global energy industry demands a country-by-country approach to managing change. The proposed participatory analytic network process model was applied to the five largest energy consumers in the European Union, namely France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK plus Turkey - a candidate for the European Union. The criteria used for the evaluations were selected from the economic dimension of the energy indicators for sustainable development. Results show that the best performer country is the UK followed by France, Turkey, Germany, Spain and Italy. Finally, we want to highlight that the methodology is able to grant participated decisions through a multi-expert traceable and transparent assessment process.

Keywords: sustainable energy; sustainable development; economic sustainability; European Union; Turkey; energy systems; energy indicators; energy security; end-use patterns; energy policy evaluation; analytical network process; ANP; multicriteria decision analysis; MCDA; multi-expert decision analysis; energy experts; expert judgements; criteria weighting; energy use; France; Germany; Italy; Spain; UK; United Kingdom.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMDM.2015.070759

International Journal of Management and Decision Making, 2015 Vol.14 No.3, pp.205 - 223

Received: 08 Oct 2014
Accepted: 11 May 2015
Published online: 23 Jul 2015 *

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