Garcia-Bernabeu A, Mayor-Vitoria F, Bravo M, Pla-Santamaria D
The problem of financing renewable energy (RE) projects has become a crucial issue for private and public decision-makers worldwide. Based on the European experience, the lack of credit makes it difficult for commercial banks to fund RE projects with traditional loans. In recent years, Project Finance has been widely used as a mechanism for funding RE projects. Project Finance decisions from lenders are made in a traditional way including quantitative financial criteria and qualitative risk assessment for non-financial criteria. In this paper, we show how the VIKOR method is applied to the selection of RE projects to be funded by commercial banks when using Project Finance. The method is combined with the AHP method for weighting the importance of the different criteria. We propose a multicriteria approach to select RE projects in which the decision maker takes into consideration financial criteria and a set of non-financial criteria regarding the technological, political-legal and socio-environmental risks of RE projects. In order to gain insight into the RE financial decision-making process, the paper makes a contribution to research in the financial field of RE investments and proposes some suggestions for managerial and practical decision making.