Evaluation of Sustainability for Coal Consumption Using a Multiattribute Decision-Making Model

The study of coal consumption has become a focus of academic attention due to ecological and environmental concerns. This study proposed a method to evaluate sustainability for coal consumption by using a multiple-attribute decision-making (MADM) model. The data used are from the China Statistical Yearbook and the China Energy Statistical Yearbook over the years. The MADM model consists of attributes (standards), their importance weights, and alternatives. The comprehensive evaluation system for the sustainability of coal consumption, which was composed of four first-grade indicators including coal strength (CS), energy dependency (ED), social development level (SL), and population size (PS) and their corresponding 20 second-grade indicators, was included in the MADM model as attributes (standards). The importance weight of the attributes was determined by the entropy weight method (EWM) and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), while the comprehensive evaluation of the sustainability of coal consumption in China over the years was considered as an alternative. The evaluation indices of four first-grade indicators were obtained through multiobjective optimization, and then through the weights and evaluation indices of the four first-grade indicators, multiobjective optimization was carried out for the overall objective of the comprehensive evaluation of the sustainability of coal consumption over the years, and the comprehensive evaluation indices of the sustainable development of coal consumption over the years were obtained. The results show that China’s coal consumption is sustainable, with the composite assessment index rising from 0.058 in 2011 to 0.837 in 2021, an increase of 13.4 times.