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Abstract: This paper provides an economic valuation of RES-E promoted by the Spanish feed-in system. First, supported RES-E is evaluated in terms of CO2 emissions avoided when they are introduced in the Spanish electricity market instead of other potential polluting energy sources. And secondly, these positive environmental externalities of supported RES-E are compared with the funds they received from the Spanish feed-in system, in order to estimate the economic balance of this support system. The estimate for 2011 shows that approximately 10% of premiums paid to promote RES-E could be explained, from an economic point of view, by the monetary value of CO2 emissions avoided by not using alternative energy sources, as coal and combined cycle. Furthermore, the economic evaluation of National Energy Commission (CNE [Spanish acronym]) proposal that links the energy sources responsible for CO2 emissions to finance the support system of RES-E, confirms that the monetary value of CO2 emissions avoided when using promoted RES-E is nearly 70% of the revenues from the sale of allowances allocated to polluting technologies in the last National Plan of Emission Allowances in 2011. Promotion of RES-E over the use of fossil energy sources, must take into account not only the costs of their implementation, but also the overall balance of their use. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: One of the characteristics of the Spanish energy system is its high degree of dependence on imports. In 2005, the Spanish government approved the new Renewable Energy Plan in the following sectors: Windpower, Hydroelectric, Solar Thermal, Solar Thermo-electric, Photovoltaic, Biomass, Biogas and Biofuels. The aim of the Plan is to make it possible to reach the target of 12% of primary energy being met from renewable sources by 2010. When selecting one from various Renewable Energy investment projects different groups of decision-makers become involved in the process. Decision-making has to take into consideration several conflicting objectives because of the increasingly complex social, economic, technological, and environmental factors that are present. Traditional single-criterion decision-making is no longer able to handle these problems. The Compromise Ranking method, also known as the VIKOR method, introduces the Multi-criteria ranking index based on the particular measure of “closeness” to the “ideal” solution. In this paper, we apply the method in the selection of a Renewable Energy project corresponding to the Renewable Energy Plan launched by the Spanish Government. The method is combined with the Analytical Hierarchy Process method for weighting the importance of the different criteria, which allows decision-makers to assign these values based on their preferences. The results show that the Biomass plant option (Co-combustion in a conventional power plant) is the best choice, followed by the Wind power and Solar Thermo-electric alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]