A MULTI-CRITERIA ANALYSIS OF LOW CARBON SCENARIOS IN PORTUGUESE ELECTRICITY SYSTEMS

Renewable technologies are suitable investments to achieve a low carbon electricity production system and to reduce the external energy dependency of Portugal in a long term period. The aim of this work was to develop and evaluate a variety of scenarios to promote these goals until 2030. A long-term electricity expansion planning model is used to design these scenarios and multi-criteria analysis is applied in the evaluation. The results demonstrated that imposing a minimum contribution of renewable energy sources (RES) for the electricity system, can be more costly than imposing CO2 emissions limitations. Taking into account the technical criteria, scenarios with high coal power share are favoured. However, under a pure social approach, the best scenario would be a 100% RES electricity system. When environmental and economic dimensions are more valued, the best options seems to be the ones with higher investments on natural gas and wind power plants.