Renewable energy investment risk assessment in belt and road initiative countries under uncertainty conditions

Highlights: • Investment risk analysis of the Belt and Road Initiative countries by the TODIM. • Weighting the evaluation criteria by Fuzzy-ANP. • Renewable energy sources ranking by COPRAS, MABAC, and GRA methods. • Sensitivity analyzing the RE investment decisions based on the tradability factor. Access to and investment in renewable energy are considered as essential factors in sustainable development. Recently, renewable energy sources and assessing their investment risk have attracted much attention, especially for companies willing to invest in the Belt and Road Initiative countries. As the main objective of the present research, investment risk factors of renewable energies in these countries are identified and categorized into five groups as economic, technical, environmental, social, and political using TODIM (Portuguese acronym for Interactive Multi-Criteria Decision Making) method. Then, the identified factors are weighted by the fuzzy-analytic network process (F-ANP) and different renewable energy sources are ranked by COPRAS, MABAC, and GRA methods under uncertainty conditions. Finally, the sensitivity analysis of investment decision making was carried out with the emphasis being placed on the tradability aspect of renewable energy projects. The results show that wind energy has a lower investment risk besides the higher economic justification, followed by hydropower. The results of this research are useful for policymakers, investors, and companies working in the field of renewable energies to assist them in the assessment of their investment projects and the expansion of their international markets.