Environmental factor weighting at the federal energy regulatory commission

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is required to assess the environmental impact of any project under its jurisdiction (e.g. pipeline construction and hydroelectric projects). Normally, this assessment involves preparing a written report that covers the entire project and identifying alternatives that have a lower environmental impact when such alternatives exist. This paper presents an approach based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for measuring environmental impacts on a common scale so that an overall impact index of a project or group of projects can be reported.