A METHODOLOGY FOR THE COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF THE SPS AND ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGIES Thomas D. Wolsko Argonne National Laboratory - Argonne, Illinois 60439 The objectives of the comparative methodology are to 1) establish a framework of assessment information that incorporates different comparative viewpoints, 2) develop a classification system in which the environmental, social, and economic issues can be grouped into meaningful categories for the decision maker, 3) identify the units of measure that are used to compare the environmental, social, and economic issues, 4) establish quantitative and qualitative strategies (approaches, methods, models) of data collection and analysis for an issue assessment, and 5) identify sources of data for the comparative assessment. Figure 1 shows the phased sequence of analytical steps that make up the framework for the comparative assessment. The first step in the process is the selection of issues and energy alternatives. Table 1 shows the candidate list of technologies from which the comparative alternatives were selected. The seven technologies with the asterisk were selected for comparison to SPS. The following criteria were used to arrive at the reduced list of energy alternatives shown in Table 1. • Energy output must be in the form of electricity. • Commercial availability should be possible in the year 2000. • The technology must have the capability for baseload operation. • The technology must have an available source of fuel for many years after the year 2000. • Design information on the technology must be available. These criteria allow the inclusion of currently used technologies that have improved performance as well as the selection of new technologies that are being developed or technologies that are still at the conceptual stage (those for which little engineering design information exists). Some of the technologies do not meet all of the criteria but were selected because they provided an important comparison to SPS. Issues arising from the deployment of SPS and the alternative terrestrial power systems are identified and described in the process of comparative issues selection. The issues taxonomy must be general enough to accommodate differences among the alternative technologies and specific enough to be truly commensurable. Since microwave energy is not a feature of any of the alternatives that might be selected for comparison with SPS, the issues cannot be described simply along the lines of microwave problems. Therefore, the approach taken here is to define comparative issues in terms of the stakeholder concerns, that is, climate, welfare, and health and safety issues. Figure 2 illustrates the taxonomy that was devised for comparing technologies. The issues are grouped under five major categories: cost and performance, environmental, economic/societal, resource, and institutional. The definitions of some of these categories are unique to this methodology and therefore should not be confused with definitions reported elsewhere.
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