Dhaka is one of the largest megacities in the world and its population is growing rapidly. Due to its location on a deltaic plain, the city is extremely prone to detrimental flooding, and risks associated with this are expected to increase further in the coming years due to global climate change impacts as well as the high rate of urbanization the city is facing. The lowest-lying part of Dhaka, namely Dhaka East, is facing the most severe risk of flooding. Traditionally, excess water in this part of the city was efficiently stored in water ponds and gradually drained into rivers through connected canals. However, the alarming increase in Dhaka’s population is causing encroachment of these water retention areas because of land scarcity. The city’s natural drainage is not functioning well and the area is still not protected from flooding, which causes major threats to its inhabitants. This situation increases the urgency to adapt effectively to current flooding caused by climate variability and also to the impacts of future climate change. Although the government is planning several adaptive measures to protect the area from floods, a systematic framework to analyze and assess them is lacking. The objective of this paper is to develop an integrated framework for the assessment and prioritization of various (current and potential) adaptation measures aimed at protecting vulnerable areas from flooding. The study identifies, analyzes, assesses and prioritizes adaptive initiatives and measures to address flood risks in the eastern fringe area, and the adaptation assessment is conducted within the framework of multi-criteria analysis (MCA) methodology. MCA facilitates the participation of stakeholders and hence allows normative judgements, while incorporating technical expertise in the adaptation assessment. Based on the assessment, adaptive measures are prioritized to indicate which actions should be implemented first. Such a participatory integrated assessment of adaptation options is currently lacking in the decision-making process in the city of Dhaka and could greatly help reach informed and structured decisions in the development of adaptation strategies for flood protection.

Sustainability indicators have been broadly used to assess energy technologies both at the national and local levels. However, very few studies have addressed the issue of resilience of energy technologies. Moreover, there is a lack of an integrated framework that combines both sustainability and resilience indicators for the assessment of energy technologies. The aim of this paper is to present the development of an integrated framework of sustainability and resilience indicators for the assessment of low-carbon energy technologies at the local level in Europe. The selection of indicators is based on a modified ‘3S’ approach, composed of literature review, self-validation, scientific validation, and social validation. The study incorporates local stakeholders’ feedback on the selection and validation of evaluation criteria based on a European survey. The vast majority of respondents approved and validated the indicators that were selected through the internal and experts’ validation steps.

This research paper aims at developing and applying a constructive weighting methodology for the elicitation of local stakeholders’ preferences regarding a set of sustainability evaluation criteria during the assessment of low-carbon energy technologies. The overall methodology has been applied and tested for the sustainability evaluation of selected low-carbon energy technologies in Europe from a local stakeholders’ perspective. The researchers applied a constructive weighting methodology based on different Multiple Criteria Analysis (MCA) techniques to test the consistency of stakeholders’ preferences. The methodology was piloted based on a small-scale European local stakeholders’ survey within the framework of Covenant CapaCITY, an Intelligent Energy Europe project that supports the development of Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAPs). It became evident that the local stakeholders who participated placed high priorities on aspects such as CO₂eq emissions reduction, ecosystem damages reduction, and resilience to climate change during the evaluation of low-carbon energy technologies. Considering the overall energy technologies assessment, wind off-shore, solar PV, hydropower, and wind on-shore achieved the highest scores and better reflected the priorities of local stakeholders considering a large set of multiple sustainability criteria. The high number of criteria led to some inconsistencies of stakeholders’ preferences, confirming the need for consistency checks and/or combining different methods of preference elicitation.

The aim of this article is the assessment of low-carbon energy technologies in Europe against a set of sustainability and resilience criteria. The assessment was based on a survey that was conducted among 40 European experts. Solar Photovoltaic was the technology that proved to achieve high performance against many criteria, whereas nuclear was assessed by the experts with relatively low performance against most of the criteria. Furthermore, it became evident that there is high degree of convergence between the experts, and therefore high degree of confidence, on specific aspects such as the high level of public resistance against Nuclear and the low stability of energy generation of wind onshore. The experts had major disagreements on the performance of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies against technological maturity and innovative ability criteria, which reveals a high degree of uncertainty on how CCS will be deployed in the future, pointing out a direction for future research.

The main objective of this article is to assess the priorities of local governments (LGs) in Europe regarding climate change mitigation technologies evaluation in the electricity sector and to provide important insights for energy policy design. The study applies a hybrid weighting methodology to elicit LGs’ preferences in a constructive and iterative way regarding the evaluation criteria of low-carbon energy technologies. Furthermore, the study employs three data collection and preference elicitation methods, namely: survey, workshop, and webinar. The study was conducted across thirty one (31) European LGs that were categorized according to three variables: population size, geographical region and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The analysis shows that “CO₂ emissions” is the most important criterion among European LGs, followed by “mortality and morbidity” and “ecosystem damages”. The results illustrate the potential synergies of climate and energy policies for addressing both CO₂ emissions and air pollution. It was also found, based on a correlation analysis, that LGs with higher GDP per capita tend to provide higher weights to criteria related to security of energy supply and technological innovation. The current study provides insights on the actual LGs’ priorities that are important to consider during low-carbon energy technologies evaluation and energy policy design. Interestingly, the results of the European LGs’ preferences clearly show that the EU climate policy objectives have reached different levels of governance—and at this particular case, the local level. Furthermore, the developed methodology could be applied at different geographical regions to map other regions’ LG priorities, but also at a group decision making context to elicit relevant stakeholders’ preferences regarding low-carbon energy technologies and policy objectives.