Examining wind energy deployment pathways in complex macro-economic and political settings using a fuzzy cognitive map-based method

Abstract

Long-term sustainable wind energy deployment faces an array of challenges due to various complex interconnected impediment factors. These inherent endogenous and exogenous uncertainties preclude obtaining an accurate future trend, which in turn complicates the design of the good policy. This study employs Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCMs) to semi-quantitatively explore the scenarios of wind energy deployment in Iran. The FCM-based framework was built using participatory workshops and a subsequent questionnaire survey to identify 26 influential factors shaping the dynamics of the system. The developed scenarios originated from the latest narratives of real-world geopolitical variations. The findings demonstrated that the sector is governed by six major groupings of factors predominated by economic and political concepts with strong interconnections between them. Five key concepts, including two economic, one legal, and two political, were ascertained that contribute to the stability of the system. Of the four scenarios, only one optimistic trajectory expects an acceleration in the deployment. Another scenario projects that there will not be any considerable change between the future scheme and the current state of development. However, the other scenarios envisage a substantially slower growth than the current trend.