Future electricity planning necessitates a thorough multi-faceted analysis of the available technologies in order to secure the energy supply for coming generations. To cope with worldwide concerns over sustainable development and meet the growing demands of electricity we assess the future potential technologies in Egypt through covering their technical, economic, environmental and social aspects. In this study we fill the gap of a lacking sustainability assessment of energy systems in Egypt where most of the studies focus mainly on the economic and technical aspects of planning future installation of power plants in Egypt. Furthermore, we include the stakeholder preferences of the indicators in the energy sector into our assessment. Moreover, we perform a sensitivity analysis through single dimension assessment scenarios of the technologies as well as a sustainable scenario with equal preferences of all dimensions of the sustainability. We employ two multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methodologies: the analytical hierarchy process for weighing the assessment criteria, and the weighted sum method for generating a general integrated sustainability index for each technology. The study investigates seven technologies: coal, natural gas, wind, concentrated solar power, photovoltaics, biomass and nuclear. The results reveal a perfect matching between the ranking of the technologies by the stakeholders and the sustainable scenario showing the highest ranking for natural gas and the lowest for nuclear and coal. There is a strong potential for renewable energy technologies to invade the electricity market in Egypt where they achieve the second ranking after natural gas. The Monte-Carlo approach gives photovoltaics a higher ranking over concentrated solar power as compared to the sample data ranking. The study concludes the importance of a multi-dimensional evaluation of the technologies while considering the preferences of the stakeholders in order to achieve a reliable and sustainable future energy supply.

To respond to the emerging challenge of climate change, feasible strategies need to be formulated towards sustainable development and energy security on a national and international level. Lacking a dynamic sustainability assessment of technologies for electricity planning, this paper fills the gap with a multi-criteria and multi-stakeholder evaluation in an integrated assessment of energy systems. This allows to select the most preferred strategies for future planning of energy security in Egypt, with a focus on alternative energy pathways and a sustainable electricity supply mix up to. A novel prototype model is used to integrate multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) as a premium decision support approach with agent-based modeling (ABM). This tool is popular in analyzing dynamic complex systems. A GIS-based spatial ABM analyzes future pathways for energy security in Egypt, depending on the preferences of agents for selected criteria to facilitate the transformation of energy landscapes. The study reveals significant temporal variations in the spatial ranking of technologies between actors in the energy sector over this period. We conclude that in order to attain a sustainable energy landscape, we should involve relevant stakeholders and analyze their interactions while considering local spatial conditions and key dimensions of sustainable development.