Title: Tools for Supporting Strategic Energy Policy Decisions

Author: Raimo P. Hämäläinen

Date: March 1998

Status: IAEA Advisory Group Meeting on the Development of Decision Aiding Tools for Incorporation into the Agency’s Planning Methodologies, Vienna, Austria 20 - 22.2.1996. (to appear)

A wide public debate on the future energy policy of Finland has been going on for over ten years. The discussion has centered around the question whether a new nuclear power plant should be built or not. This paper summarized experiences from using different computerized decision aids to clarify the debate and describe the differences between anti-nuclear and pro-nuclear opinions. Decision analysis is used as the basic methodology in the aids. We discuss the different preference elicitation methods used including multiattribute value trees (MAVT), the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and the new methods (PAIRS and interval AHP) based on incomple elicitation of preference information. The related software tools developed in the Systems Analysis Laboratory are called HIPRE 3+, ComPairs and INPRE. The general observation is that with these aids the most essential sources of opinion differences can be pointed out and thus a deeper understanding of the issues can be gained. This enables focusing the debate on the critical questions and elimination of less important criteria, which otherwise might receive disproportionate attention.