Determination of optimal renewable energy growth strategies using SWOT analysis, hybrid MCDM methods, and game theory: A case study

Summary Due to population growth and industrial development, Iran is facing the challenge of energy supply in various industrial, power plant, agricultural, and residential sectors. While most of Iran's energy supply comes from fossil fuels, these fuels have devastating environmental impacts. Therefore, Iran has to invest more in its renewable energy sources. Given that many locations of Iran have significant wind, solar, and geothermal potential, this study used a combination of SWOT, multicriteria decision‐making approaches, and game theory to identify the best renewable energy development plans for the country. The Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) technique was applied to weight the criteria and sub‐criteria. Impact on the environment, resource potential, and power generation cost with weights of 0.218, 0.182, and 0.145 was recognized as the most important sub‐criteria, respectively. To rank the factors in each SWOT dimension, namely, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, the Grey Additive Ratio ASsessment (ARAS‐Grey) method was then used. Using the game theory and fuzzy Shapley value, the best combination of renewable energy development strategies was determined to be SO1ST3WO1WT1 with a value of (1.72, 0.58, 0.3). The development of high‐efficiency wind and solar technologies and the minimization of output fluctuations and loss through energy storage methods such as hydrogen production and battery banks were identified as the best strategy combination for renewable energy development in Iran. The novelty of this study is to determine the optimal strategies for the development of renewable resources in Iran for the first time. For this purpose, combination of three following methods are used: SWOT analysis, hybrid MCDM methods, and Game Theory. Therefore, game theory and fuzzy Shapley values were used to address the weakness of considering the dependence between strategic factors in SWOT analysis and MCDM methods.