A Robust Approach for Cooperation and Coopetition of Bio-Refineries Under Government Interventions by Considering Sustainability Factors

Abstract

The most significant international issue affecting society and the economy today is energy. Also, addressing sustainability issues, including environmental, economic, and social issues are the main goals of governments in developing and developed countries. Therefore, it has been in the interest of governments to consider strategies that could move the energy industry, especially fuel, towards clean fuel production. In this paper, the effect of government financial interventions under the coalition of bio-refineries to achieve sustainability goals has been studied. The proposed nonlinear model aims to obtain the optimum amount of biofuel production under the conditions of the cooperation of bio-refineries and government financial interventions. On the other hand, government sustainability goals are considered as functions related to economic, social, and environmental issues. Mulvey's robust approach is employed for controlling model uncertainties. For finding the best tariff policy, the MULTIMOORA approach is used by considering sustainability considerations, and the Best-Worst Approach is followed in obtaining the weights of the criteria. Furthermore, for the best tariff policy in a general coalition, sharing the profits among the bio-refineries as players in a cooperative game, fair profit distribution methods were applied. Finally, managerial results were presented by a sensitivity analysis of the tariff parameter.

Keywords

• Biofuel production
• government interventions
• sustainability
• cooperative game theory
• robust optimization