Selection of energy efficiency projects using TOPSIS method
International Journal of Development Research
Selection of energy efficiency projects using TOPSIS method
Article History: Received 16th December, 2018; Received in revised form 11th January, 2019; Accepted 03rd February, 2019; Published online 31st March, 2019
Copyright © 2019, Marcelo Augusto Gonçalves Fonseca et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Energy is essential to the society’s progress, and its efficient use is necessary in an environment with finite resources. The Brazilian industrial sector demanded a third of all energy consumed in 2017, while in the United States this share was 22% of primary energy consumption. The American government invests significantly in research and development to promote energy efficiency in all sectors of the economy since the oil crisis in 1973. Energy is the most expensive input for the industry and energy efficiency measures can reduce the structural and production costs, but many projects can imply in high investments. This work classified projects of energy efficiency in order to be used in the decision-making process within the industry for resource allocation. It was used data from 97 energy efficiency projects implemented in 32 companies in the United States available on the Department of Energy website, which were ranked by the TOPSIS multi criteria decision making methodology using financial and sustainability indicators as criteria, varying the criteria weights in 9 scenarios. The final rankings obtained resulted that maintenance projects for leakage, purge traps and insulation should be the starting point independently of the weights assigned to the criteria.