Selection of environmental criteria for multi-criteria evaluation of energy supply alternatives in Non-Interconnected Zones of Colombia

Access to energy resources is deeply related to community development. The availability of electrical energy allows the development of social, economic, health, and educational activities, and access to reliable energy resources can support energy supply. In this sense, the need to invest in projects focused on using alternative sources of energy is a major issue. Nevertheless, these types of projects require the inclusion of economic, administrative, social, cultural, technical, and environmental criteria in their selection to be successfully executed, and ensure a solution with a sustainable nature, aligned with any context of implementation. The objective of this research is to set the environmental criteria for a multicriteria selection methodology for Colombia's energy supply systems. According to this purpose, and for the Colombian context, the concept of environmental criteria and the environmental sub-criterions that contribute to the correct development of an energy supply system were identified. This definition was constructed from a review of the known environmental impacts of five technologies: solar photovoltaic, wind, biomass, hydraulic and conventional (diesel). The sub-criteria were classified into the categories of intervened area, understood as the space occupied by the project and its impact on other activities; climate change, focusing on susceptibility and effects; the impact of biodiversity and its attributes concerning specific species and the generation of greenhouse gases (GHG) and other gases. At the same time, the methodological analysis was carried out to define the representativeness of each sub-criterion against the environmental criterion, being the sub-criterion area intervened, as the most representative within the conditions exposed by our context. This work represents an approach in Colombia for a multicriteria tool used for energy supply systems. The considerations adopted here could be subject to changes depending on the criteria that are integrated into the evaluation of an energy project.