Decision making in energy policies with conflicting interests

Abstract

The approach was tested in a large policy study on future energy strategies. The study contains three major components: in a first step values and criteria were elicited by interviewing the leading representatives of nine stakeholder groups in the Federal Republic of Germany and structured in the form of a joint value tree. Second, the revealed criteria were translated into indicators. Four different energy scenarios were evaluated with respect to each indicator making use of physical measurement, literature review and expert surveys. Third, the weights for each indicator were elicited by interviewing randomly chosen citizens. Those citizens were informed about the scenarfos and their impacts prior to the weighting process in a four day seminar. The results of the study were reported to the policy making bodies and served as a discussion outline to form aviable compromise for future energy politics.The chances, prospects and limitations of the applied model are discussed during the presentation and some guidelines are developed for an effective and implementable policy consultation.