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Sustainability assessment of existing onshore wind plants in the context of triple bottom line: a best-worst method (BWM) based MCDM framework

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Abstract

Not only the steadily growing demand for electricity generation but also the environmental concerns in recent years have led to the belief in the importance of renewable energy. Wind is one of the most important renewable energy sources utilized in electricity generation for a sustainable environment. This paper deals with performance assessment for existing onshore wind plants in terms of triple bottom line of sustainability and aims to propose a structural methodology. Furthermore, the proposed framework is essentially formed through two stages: the first stage is the determination of relative weights for sustainability factors through the best-worst method (BWM) and the second stage is a sustainability performance assessment of the available 42 wind plants in Izmir, Turkey. According to the findings, the environmental dimension is the most significant, followed by the economic and social dimensions. The results also reveal that distance to protected areas is the most important factor among others in terms of sustainability performance and that the wind plants throughout the north side of Izmir have a higher sustainability performance. To validate the robustness and reliability of the introduced framework, a sensitivity analysis is also conducted. The proposed framework could be employed successfully in other scientific applications.

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Data availability

The model setup and model results are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administrative, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Afyon Kocatepe University, ANS Campus, 03030, Afyonkarahisar, Turkey

    Fatih Ecer

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 2 The WPs considered in this study
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Table 3 Pairwise comparison of dimensions
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Table 4 Pairwise comparison of factors of economic dimension
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Table 5 Pairwise comparison of factors of factors environmental dimension
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Table 6 Pairwise comparison of factors of social dimension
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Table 7 Weights for dimensions
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Table 8 Local weights for economic factors
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Table 9 Local weights for environmental factors
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Table 10 Local weights for social factors
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Table 11 Evaluation scores of WPs
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Table 12 Detailed assessment of WPs in Izmir
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Table 13 The ranks of the alternatives in relation to various weights
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Table 14 Rankings based on different scenarios
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Fig. 4
figure 4

The number of pairwise comparisons of AHP and BWM (adapted from Ecer 2020a)

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Ecer, F. Sustainability assessment of existing onshore wind plants in the context of triple bottom line: a best-worst method (BWM) based MCDM framework. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 19677–19693 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11940-4

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