Siting Energy Facilities

Siting Energy Facilities describes a tool for making the process of finding sites for energy facilities more efficient and more responsive to the concerns of society. The result should be better sites and a siting process that is understandable and defensible. A major focus of the approach is the systematic search for and identification of suitable candidate sites for the proposed facility. The evaluation of the candidate sites explicitly includes environmental impacts, health and safety, socioeconomic effects, and public attitudes, in addition to engineering and economic criteria. The procedure allows the inclusion of the uncertainties and value judgments that are a significant part of all energy siting problems. The material in this book can be categorized into three sections: problem definition, the methodological and procedural aspects of the decision analysis siting approach, and illustrations of its use. The first two chapters define what is meant by an energy facility siting problem and indicate the approach and motivation for the decision analysis siting procedure. Subsequent chapters discuss methodological and procedural details of the approach along with a case study on the selection of a site for a pumped storage power plant.

Chapter Titles

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 The siting problem

1.1 Bounding the Siting Problem

1.2 The Decision Maker for Siting Problems

1.3 General Concerns in Siting

1.4 Features Complicating the Siting Problem

1.5 The Argument for Formal Analyses of Siting Problems

1.6 Outline of the Book

Chapter 2 Methodologies for Siting Energy Facilities

2.1 Requirements of a Siting Methodology

2.2 Currently Used Siting Procedures

2.3 Overview of the Decision Analysis Siting Procedure

2.4 A Perspective on Objective, Value-Free Analysis

Chapter 3 The Washington Public Power Supply System Nuclear Siting Study

Background for the Problem

3.1 The Screening Process: Identifying Candidate Sites

3.2 Specifying Objectives and Attributes

3.3 Describing Possible Site Impacts

3.4 Evaluating Site Impacts

3.5 Analyzing and Comparing the Candidate Sites

3.6 Appraisal of the Analysis

Chapter 4 Identifying Candidate Sites

4.1 The Use of Screening

4.2 Weaknesses of Standard Screening Techniques

4.3 Decision Analysis Screening Models

4.4 Implementation of Decision Analysis Screening Models

Chapter 5 Specifying Objectives and Attributes of Siting Studies

5.1 The Objectives Hierarchy for Evaluating Sites

5.2 Selecting Objectives to Include in the Analysis

5.3 Selecting Attributes for Measuring Objectives

5.4 Natural and Constructed Scales for Attributes

5.5 Desirable Properties of the Final Set of Attributes

Chapter 6 Describing Possible Site Impacts

Outline of the Chapter

6.1 Methods for Quantifying Impacts

6.2 Quantifying Environmental Impacts

6.3 Quantifying Economic Impacts

6.4 Quantifying Socioeconomic Impacts

6.5 Quantifying Health and Safety

6.6 Quantifying Public Attitudes

6.7 Constructing a Model of a Potential Accident: a Landslide Case

6.8 Constructing a Model of Public Risks: an LNG Case

Chapter 7 Evaluating Site Impacts

7.1 Advantages of Formalizing the Value Structure

7.2 Evaluation of Multiple Objective Impacts

7.3 Evaluation of Impacts over Time

7.4 Evaluation of Impacts over Multiple Groups

7.5 Quantifying Attitudes toward Risks

7.6 The Art of Assessing Preferences

7.7 Evaluation of Impacts with Multiple Clients

Chapter 8 Analyzing and Comparing Candidate Sites

8.1 The Procedure for Analysis

8.2 Sensitivity Analysis of the Impact Data

8.3 Sensitivity Analysis of Values

8.4 Sensitivity Analysis of the Problem Structure

8.5 Reporting and Interpreting the Results

Chapter 9 Evaluation of Proposed Pumped Storage Sites

Background for the Problem

9.1 Identifying Candidate Sites: the Screening Process

9.2 Specifying Objectives and Attributes

9.3 Describing Possible Site Impacts

9.4 Evaluating Site Impacts

9.5 Analyzing and Comparing the Candidate Sites

9.6 Appraisal of the Analysis

Chapter 10 Siting and Related Problems

10.1 Licensability of Energy Facilities

10.2 Design of an Energy Facility

10.3 Selection of an Energy Source

10.4 Capacity of an Energy Facility

10.5 Timing the Introduction of a New Energy Facility

10.6 Sequencing of Energy Facilities

10.7 Setting Standards for Energy Facilities

10.8 Concluding Remarks

Appendix The Complete Set of Assumptions for the Decision Analysis Approach to the Siting of Energy Facilities

A.1 Basic Tenets of Decision Analysis

A.2 Fundamental Assumptions and Operational Assumptions of Siting Decision Analysis

A.3 Fundamental Implication of the Assumptions

A.4 Misconceptions about the Decision Analysis Siting Methodology

References

Index