Evaluating energy management investments for sustainable transition of smart cities through a new intuitionistic fuzzy consensus-based CoCoSo methodology

Abstract

Energy management investments are rather crucial in reducing enterprises' energy consumption and energy costs. Hence, necessary measures ought to be taken to increase the performance of these investments. However, improving these variables causes these companies' costs to grow. Because of this issue, there is a need for a new study in which more priority indicators can be determined. This study aims to measure the policy alternatives for the sustainable transition of smart cities in terms of energy management investments by using a novel consensus-based Combined Compromise Solution (CoCoSo) approach with intuitionistic fuzzy information. Firstly, the components of energy management investments are weighted. Afterward, policy alternatives for the sustainable transition of smart cities are ranked. The novelty of this study is to construct a new component set of energy management investments for the sustainable transition of smart cities. Additionally, the main contribution is that a priority analysis is made to define critical factors that affect energy management investments for the sustainable transition of smart cities. Developing a consensus-based CoCoSo approach with intuitionistic fuzzy information is another important contribution of the work. With the help of this issue, necessary actions can be taken without having high costs. It is concluded that risk identification and assessment should be primarily considered while making energy management investments for the sustainable transition of smart cities. To increase energy management investments’ performance, investors should primarily consider potential risks associated with the investments in the countries where they will invest. Further, it is concluded that public involvement is the most critical policy alternative for the sustainable transition of smart cities. Within this context, the level of public engagement and participation should be increased in the transition. For this purpose, relevant feedback should be provided from third parties. To check the reliability and robustness of the proposed methodology, a sensitivity and comparison control is further performed.