Conditions accommodating a dominant stakeholder in the design of renewable air conditioning systems for tourism complexes

Highlights: • A multi-objective model for design of seawater air conditioning system is presented. • A multi-stakeholder framework for defining priorities in energy design is used. • The concept of dominant stakeholder is introduced. • Compromise solutions reduce the dissatisfaction of stakeholders. • Flexibility about compromise solution for dominant stakeholders is addressed. -- Abstract: Seawater air conditioning systems use cold water from the deep ocean to provide cooling utilities to buildings. Their design, as with other renewable energy systems, involves the participation of multiple stakeholders with different preferences and objectives. A multi-objective strategy based on compromise solutions for reducing the dissatisfaction between multiple participants is presented. The dominant stakeholder is considered to have predominant participation, opinion, and weight in the final decision of the project. The presented decision-making framework allows for the resolution of conflicts and shows the effects of different criteria on the final configuration of the system. This work presents an optimal design model considering, as a case study, a touristic zone in Mexico. The results show significant differences between scenarios where all the stakeholders are considered under a condition of equality and one in which only the dominant stakeholder is considered. This decision-making approach shows flexibility and provides tolerance limits for compromise solutions that still consider the influence of the dominant stakeholder.