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

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.