How to Manage Conflicting Values in Minor Islands: A MCDA Methodology Towards Alternative Energy Solutions Assessment

The growing awareness towards the energy issue has led to a dramatic change in structuring decisional problems related to energy supplies by giving greater importance to the environmental impacts of projects and their effects on life quality. This kind of matter is enriched in complexity when Decision Makers (DMs) have to deal with cultural heritage in fragile areas. Indeed, this fact leads to consider an array of cultural values related to the area's peculiarities and deal with all the difficulties associated with marginalized territorial contexts. In this perspective, the paper aims to provide an analytic framework to support DMs in defining the favorable energy supply solution for a historical rural landscape. The methodological framework is based on a Multicriteria Decision Aiding Methodology (MCDA), which considers the conflicting values of such a decisional issue. This support tool is applied to a project in Pantelleria island, which has recently been the focus of different policies for energy efficiency. Indeed, Pantelleria richness in natural energy sources makes it possible to shift to sustainable energy supply models different from the current one. Furthermore, the island is an extraordinary example of a historical rural landscape but, at the same time, is undergoing a marginalization process. The evaluation process considers the multiple dimensions of sustainability through a MCDA methodology for assessing three different context-aware energy scenarios: a wind-based scenario, a solar-based scenario, and a traditional scenario. In conclusion, the main results from the evaluation process and the future research perspectives are discussed.