Capturing Uncertainties in Evaluation of Biofuels Feedstocks: A Multi-Criteria Approach for the US

Current research evaluating biofuels policies focuses primarily on market-economic criteria. While it is widely acknowledged that both the economic and environmental, and social aspects of biofuels policy must all be balanced with each other in the process of developing a viable biofuels policy, little progress has been made to date on evaluating these uncertain non-market relationships. In this paper, we develop a fuzzy theory holistic approach evaluating the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation biofuels feedstocks in meeting multiple economic, environmental and social criteria of the biofuels policies and capturing the uncertainties of evaluation processes. We use a multi-criteria approach PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluations) and fuzzy set theory to show how missing information, fuzziness, and ambiguity in decision making processes can be considered for a sustainable biofuels policy evaluation.