Determination of the most suitable renewable energy source for Turkey using multi-criteria decision-making techniques

Increasing demand for energy in the recent decades and the fact that the traditional energy sources have been running out in the long term have led to a search for new energy sources. With the advancements in technology making them more usable than ever before, renewable energy sources have been started to be seen as the energy sources of the future. Governments transfer their existing installed energy power, which is dependent on fossil fuels, to renewable energy sources and make new energy policies accordingly. In this work, using PROMETHEE, Multi-MOORA, and Preference Selection Index (PSI) techniques, which are all multi-criteria decision-making techniques, the most suitable renewable energy source for Turkey is determined. Solar energy, wind energy, biomass energy, hydraulic and geothermal energy alternatives are evaluated by a total of twenty-four sub-criteria under the main criteria of technical, economic, environmental, social-political, potential, and production-contribution.. For the cases in which the values for each alternative/criterion pair are expressed verbally, the fuzzy set theory is used to make verbal expressions quantitative. The problem of choosing the most suitable renewable energy source for Turkey is solved by using the techniques listed above, separately. Then, the rankings obtained by these techniques are combined to determine the final ranking by using Borda count method. According to the results obtained, hydraulic energy is found to be the most suitable renewable energy source for Turkey. Hydraulic energy is followed by biomass energy, solar energy, geothermal energy, and wind energy, respectively.