ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF ENERGY ALTERNATIVES: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH COMPRISING FACTORS MATRIX, DIGITAL ATTENUATION AND NEWTON-COTES INTEGRATION PROCESSES

Economic decision making is an intricate matter in the modern era as many explicit and implicit socio-economic and environmental factors affect choice of alternatives. This complexity is more pronounced in case of energy alternatives for Pakistan as many socioeconomic and environmental factors influence the choice. Our country is blessed with many energy alternative sources and we have to select feasible alternative source for implementation to reduce exiting gap between energy supply and demand. Economic analysis of alternatives using cost benefit analysis (CBA) does not cater for the implicit factors such as social, ethical and environmental aspects. Therefore, this research was aimed to develop a versatile and comprehensive framework for the economic analysis of the energy alternatives based on factors matrix of socio-economic and environmental factors. A combination of three approaches were used for economic analysis of energy alternatives; the statistical analysis of factors matrix to obtain trend and ratings, digital analysis of the data by computer assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS) and quantitative analysis of ratings by Newton-Cotes integration process. Paper is a unique combination of theoretical, digital and mathematical economics.