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Environmental pollution has become a critical social problem in China. Evaluating and selecting suitable renewable energy sources for a city is vitally essential for its long-term sustainable development. Identifying the key factors that influence the evaluation system is another crucial process. Therefore, we address the evaluation problem using two steps: (1) applying a decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method to analyze the relevant factors and (2) ranking the factors by the preference ranking organization method for enrichment of evaluations (PROMETHEE). As a result, we introduce a new DEMATEL method based on grey relation analysis (GRA) via objective data in a decision matrix. The new method not only avoids the instability of the traditional DEMATEL method by applying experts' subjective opinions to compare two factors but also addresses the challenges faced by decision …