Title: Sustainable energy technology transfers through the CDM? Application of participatory approaches for decision making facilitation

Authors: Charikleia Karakosta, Alexandros Flamos, Haris Doukas, Asher Vaturi

Addresses: School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Management and Decision Support Systems Lab (EPU-NTUA), 9, Iroon Polytechniou str., 15780, Athens, Greece. ' School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Management and Decision Support Systems Lab (EPU-NTUA), 9, Iroon Polytechniou str., 15780, Athens, Greece. ' School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Management and Decision Support Systems Lab (EPU-NTUA), 9, Iroon Polytechniou str., 15780, Athens, Greece. ' The Interdisciplinary Centre for Technological Analysis and Forecasting, Tel Aviv University (ICTAF), Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

Abstract: The two big challenges for this century are world poverty and climate change. The clean development mechanism (CDM) has the potential to address both, through integrated programmes that will be in compliance with the needs and objectives of the host countries. Actual practice shows that CDM technology transfer is focused on reducing emissions at the lowest possible cost and less on the sustainable development priorities and objectives of the host countries. This paper discusses a participatory approach to facilitate energy decision makers and relevant stakeholders to define, evaluate and finally decide on the most suitable sustainable energy technologies to transfer and implement in a particular developing country through the CDM. Following an overview presentation of the methodology, the results from its application in Israel are presented and analysed. The last section comments on the case of Israel and provides insights of the adopted approach.

Keywords: participatory decision analysis; sustainable technology transfer; clean development mechanism; CDM; Israel; energy technology transfer; decision making; sustainable development; environmental policy; sustainability.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEPDM.2010.033908

International Journal of Environmental Policy and Decision Making, 2010 Vol.1 No.1, pp.1 - 16

Published online: 03 Jul 2010 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article