A new regret theory-based risk decision-making method for renewable energy investment under uncertain environment

Abstract

Renewable energy is considered as a promising solution to alleviate the exploitation of fossil fuel energy and to keep sustainable development. Hence, renewable energy investments are attracting more and more attention. To solve the renewable energy investment problems under uncertain environment, this paper proposes a new multi-criteria risk decision-making method based on interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FSs) and regret theory. First, to describe the uncertainty of real-world situation, the evaluation information is expressed by linguistic terms and encoded into IT2FSs. Second, a new interval type-2 fuzzy projection model is proposed to measure the relationships between alternatives under interval type-2 fuzzy environment. Then, to determine the criteria weights, a new interval type-2 fuzzy entropy weight determination model is developed. Moreover, some new rules are provided to explore the difference between alternatives under different spaces (i.e., positive space and negative space). Finally, the regret theory is extended to describe the psychological behavior of decision makers and select the optimal alternative under risk and uncertainty environment. A case study including comparative analysis is provided to manifest the feasibility and advantages of the proposed method.