The global energy transition requires many countries to use a high share of intermittent renewable energies, which poses a challenge to energy supply and system reliability. There are different strategies to mitigate these intermittencies and the large-scale deployment of energy storage plays a crucial role here. In addition to the technical challenge, these types of transitions involve different types of conflicts, such as maintaining economic prosperity while also achieving climate goals and meeting social objectives. In this context, decision-making involves different sectors of society with different priorities and therefore requires a tool such as Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to facilitate communication between citizens, decision-makers, and technology developers.

MCDA methods have been widely used for sustainability assessment (SA) in the context of energy management. Although the potential applications of MCDA for SA are described in the literature to guide analysts conducting this type of assessment, their implementation in real-life settings is limited because these methods are often perceived as complex, time-consuming, and expensive. Specific conditions, such as unknown impacts, lack of data, or high uncertainty, can increase the complexity of the task.

The aim of this dissertation is to develop and apply a software-based methodology to support stakeholder integration in MCDA-SA. The methodology will be designed to

• fully incorporate the definitions and capabilities of MCDA methods for the SA of energy technologies,
• organize and structure the decision-making process, increasing the consistency of sustainability definitions and the quality of the final decision.

To this end, an interactive decision-support tool based on MCDA methods will be developed and implemented in a case study on energy storage technology. Initially, it will be used by researchers and technology developers to systematically work through complex decision-making processes relevant to a sustainable energy transition. Later, the tool will support the integration of stakeholders in higher-level decision-making processes, e.g., in policy making. In order to achieve the objectives of this research, four main steps are to be completed: literature review of the state of knowledge, conception of the methodology and the decision support tool, application of the methodology in a use case for energy storage technologies as well as analysis and evaluation of the methodology.

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