Sustainable Optimization for China’s Hydropower Project Investment Portfolio Using Multiobjective Decision Analysis

The development of renewable energy becomes increasingly important because of exhaustion of fossil energy. Hydropower is one of the most important ways to generate electricity from renewable energy because of its relatively stable output among them. However, hydropower project development with some inherent characteristics is highly susceptible to social and natural environments, which complicates the investment process. For this purpose, this paper proposes a feasible comprehensive optimization model of portfolio investment from the perspective of sustainable development, describing the tradeoff relationship between economic, social, and ecological factors. As a hybrid uncertain NP-hard optimization problem, there are three critical challenges: (1) achieving comprehensive balance between economy, society, and ecology; (2) identifying available multiple conflicting objectives and reasonable constraints; (3) analysing the hybrid uncertain environment. Therefore, a practical problem-oriented multiobjective decision analysis model is established. Then, a multiobjective adaptive particle swarm optimization algorithm is designed to solve the model. Finally, a case study is carried out to verify the practicality of the model and the effectiveness of the improved algorithm. The result demonstrates that the model can be applied as a useful decision-making tool for decision-makers in sustainable hydropower project development.