An Evaluation of Energy Alternatives for Turkey via Fuzzy Multicriteria Approach Hasan Hüseyin Turan, Alperen Bal, Ömer Faruk Yilmaz, Cengiz Güngör, Hikmet Erbiyik University of Yalova, Department of Industrial Engineering, Yalova, Merkez 77100, Turkey Abstract--Economical development of countries is greatly affected by right energy strategies. However, strategic energy investment decisions are often complex and multifaceted and involve many different stakeholders with different priorities or objectives. Thus, a systematic approach is needed to find the best energy investment option for countries' future. In this research, a fuzzy multicriteria decision making methodology is suggested for the selection among energy policies. The methodology is based on fuzzy set theory because of its ability to cope with vague and incomplete information. As a case study suggested method is tested to rank several energy alternatives namely hydro-power, solar, wind, coal, biomass, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy for Turkey. The numerical results reveal insights for feasibility and effectiveness of proposed method. Finally, sensitivity analysis is performed to test the stability of the rankings for each alternative. I. INTRODUCTION The current trend of rising fossil fuel prices and observed climate change, and other adverse environmental and societal impacts of energy use, make the exploration for more sustainable ways to use energy more important than ever. The public, industry, and government are aware of the fact that protecting, improving, and managing energy resources are extremely important. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to help decision makers for managing energy sources efectively by evaluating energy investment policies for particularly Turkey. In Turkey, the growing population, industrialization and increasing standard of living have considerably increased the dependence on imported energy. Consequently, in addition to the development of conventional energy resources, exploitation of non-conventional energy resources and energy conservation has become inevitable [1]. In order to provide Turkey's national energy security in the 21st century, establishing a long-term strategic energy investment planning is essential through selection and specialization. Yet, the selection among various energy investment alternatives is a laborious task involving numerous players, conflicting priorities with separate weights, and different scenarios. Consequently, selecting from among many different alternatives often involves making trade-offs that fail to satisfy 1 or more stakeholder groups [2]. Thus, a systematic approach is needed in energy investment planning. Moreover, systematic approach would be beneficial in order to find most appropriate solutions to give the right decision for managing current scare energy resources. The primary energy sources are [3]: Solid fuels, liquid fuels, gaseous fuels, hydropower, nuclear energy, solar energy, biomass energy, wind energy, ocean energy, and geothermal energy. In this paper, these alternatives except ocean and geothermal energy are considered to determine the most appropriate energy policy for Turkey. To sum up, the main contribution of this research is to rank of energy technology alternatives by proposed Hybrid Fuzzy Multi Criteria Decision methodology (H-FMCDM). H-FMCDM can be thought as mixture of modified fuzzy logarithmic least square method [4] and the methodology presented in [5] which integrates the fuzzy theory into the AHP approach, to calculate the weights of energy alternatives. The rest of paper is organized as follows: literature review is presented in section 2. This section is mostly related to current studies that have concentrated on selecting the best energy policy and determining the best energy alternatives. In section 3, the proposed method is introduced and some background information is given about fuzzy multi-criteia decision making. Application of discussed procedure is given in also Section 3. In following section, sensitivity analysis is described and several different scenarios are tested to discuss stability of ranking results. Finally, the conclusions remarks and further research directions are presented in section 5. II. LITERATURE REVIEW Energy planning by utilizing multi-criteria analysis has attracted the attention of decision-makers and researchers for a long time. Multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) is an operational evaluation and decision support approach suitable for addressing complex problems featuring high uncertainty, conflicting objectives, multi interests and perspectives [6]. Due to this capability of MCDM, there exists several MCDM applications related to energy investment planning and management of energy sources. The methods that are used in mentioned applications can be divided in three main groups; value measurement models, goal, aspiration and reference level models, and outranking models. Methods from all of these groups have been applied to energy planning problems Each of the methods has its advantages and drawbacks [7]. However, it cannot be concluded that one method generally is better suited than the others for energy planning and evaluation problems. The literature on the area mainly focuses on renewable energy planning, electric utility planning, energy resource allocation, energy management building, and project planning issues. The remainder of this section presents brief review of existing literature about energy planning in which MCDM techniques are employed such us PROMETHEE, ELECTRE, TOPSIS, AHP, Fuzzy AHP etc... Study [8] considers whether small scale or large-scale approaches to renewable energy provision are the best placed to help meet these targets at the lowest social, economic and environmental cost. Two main methods of data analysis were utilized in this study: A MCDA study using the MACBETH 1088 2011 Proceedings of PICMET '11: Technology Management In The Energy-Smart World (PICMET)