Using a sustainability index to assess energy technologies for rural electrification

This paper introduces a method for evaluating the sustainability performance of energy technologies applied in rural electrification, using the multivariate technique called Principal component analysis (PCA).The sustainability is assessed in terms of energy technology sustainability index (ETSI). The ETSI has been used for assessing the sustainability performance of ten different energy systems in the case of India. Since this method is static in nature, the sustainability performance analysis is made for three different years (2005, 2010 and 2015) to capture technological advancements and changes in market conditions for the various technologies over time. The result shows that mature technologies such as biomass gasifiers, biogas and microhydro technologies have relatively better sustainability performance among the options analyzed. There is slight increment in their sustainability performance in the ten year period considered. Emerging technologies such as solar and wind have fairly good improvement in the sustainability performance over the studied time but still have difficulties competing with the mature technologies and conventional technologies without policy support. Analysis has been made with probable, minimum and maximum capital costs, operational and fuel costs to capture uncertainty among the input assumptions, and sensitivity has been reflected in the analysis of energy technology sustainability index (ETSI). This ETSI could help improve energy technology assessments, particularly when it comes to the feasibility of available alternatives. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.