Decision making in renewable energy investments: A review Eleni Strantzali n , Konstantinos Aravossis Sector of Industrial Management and Operational Research, School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Iroon Polytechniou 9, 15780 Athens, Greece article info Article history: Received 9 December 2014 Received in revised form 9 July 2015 Accepted 12 November 2015 Keywords: Renewable Energy Sources (RES) Decision Support Systems (DSS) Energy Planning LCA CBA MCDA abstract One of the problems facing researchers in the application of renewable energy systems is that the evaluation of the sustainability is extremely perplex. Decision making in energy projects requires con- sideration of technical, economic, environmental and social impacts and is often complicated. This paper presents a review of the current state of the art in decision support methods applied to renewable and sustainable energy throughout the literature in the field of energy planning. The selected papers were classified by their year of publication, decision making technique, energy type, the criteria used, geo- graphic distribution and the application areas. & 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Contents 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................ 885 1.1. A brief overview of the study .................................................................................... 886 2. Decision support methods applied to renewable energy sources .............................................................. 886 2.1. Life Cycle Analysis-LCA ......................................................................................... 886 2.2. Cost Benefit Analysis-CBA ....................................................................................... 887 2.3. Multicriteria Decision Aid -MCDA................................................................................. 887 2.3.1. Several MCDA methods .................................................................................. 887 3. Classification of studies ............................................................................................... 887 3.1. Year of publication............................................................................................. 888 3.2. Distribution of applied methods in literature ....................................................................... 888 3.3. Distribution of the analysed energy type in literature................................................................. 889 3.4. Classification by application area ................................................................................. 890 3.5. Evaluation criteria ............................................................................................. 893 3.6. Geographic distribution of case studies ............................................................................ 894 4. Conclusions ........................................................................................................ 894 References ............................................................................................................. 895 1. Introduction Energy is central to achieving the interrelated goals of modern societies: to meet human needs for heating, cooling, lighting, mobility and for running a large diversity of appliances, as well as to supply power and heat to production systems. Until the out- break of the energy crisis, meeting these needs was a routine problem whose solution was principally a matter of money and technology availability. At these times, per capita energy con- sumption was a safe index of a nation's prosperity, while energy planning was aiming at supplying the energy required at the right time and in the least costly way [1]. The energy system has been the subject of substantial discussion over the course of the last 40 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2015.11.021 1364-0321/& 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. n Corresponding author. E-mail address: lenast@central.ntua.gr (E. Strantzali). Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 55 (2016) 885–898