Decision support for energy savings and emissions trading in industry

LifeSaver project congregates the development of contextualized decision support approach for energy savings and emissions trading. This approach aims at supporting industrial users in selecting the best alternative to ensure minimization of energy consumption during the production process as well as support to emissions trading market. LifeSaver provides decision support for: (i) immediate reaction and (ii) process reconfiguration and Emission Trading System. This categorization serves as base for defining the methods to be applied. The support for immediate reaction uses Case-based Reasoning together with probabilistic analysis. Process reconfiguration and ETS is implemented through the use of multi-criteria decision analysis based on MACBETH method, which has been adapted for LifeSaver specific characteristics. The paper proposes categorization of approaches, main criteria involved in the process and associated algorithms. Moreover the approaches proposed were successfully tested in industrial environment and the results obtained are here presented. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.