The first step accomplished by the Italian government toward the reduction of the greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions is represented by the endorsement of the Kyoto protocol in 1997. In order to comply with the target of 6.5% reduction of GHGs emissions with respect to the emissions of 1990, a specific National allocation Plan for the Reduction of GHGs emission levels was arranged. The implementation of the actions foreseen by the plan (which involve the industrial and public services sectors) implies some investment costs, therefore it is important to select the most effective initiatives and give them a priority of implementation. In the achievement of this difficult task, a decision support model as the one described in this paper can help the decision makers to select the "best" compromise among economical, environmental and social items, that are often clashing. After a selection of a set of independent indicators able to describe the plan, nine different scenarios for the GHGs emissions reductions were evaluated and they were sorted according to the principles of the classical Multi-Criteria analysis. The results of the evaluation process show that the preferable options are also the ones accomplishing a good compromise between economic investment and reduction of GHGs emissions. Although the model is necessarily affected by some subjective choices made by the expert, it is characterized by an high level of transparency and scientific foundation.
Keywords. Greenhouse gases; Decision Support Systems; Multicriteria Decision Making; National Allocation Plan
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How to cite this article
Cellura, M., Ardente, F., Beccali, G., Fontana, M. and Marvuglia, A. (2007). 'A Decision Support System applied to the Italian national allocation plan for the reduction of the GHGs emissions'. SET Proceedings, 6(1), pp. 299-304. https://doi.org/10.65582/set.2007.049
