A decision-making framework integrating energy efficiency and climate resilience: evidence from ASEAN economies

Enhancing energy efficiency while strengthening climate resilience has become a pivotal challenge for ASEAN economies exposed to rising energy demand and intensifying climate risks. Although previous studies have examined energy efficiency, renewable energy transition, and climate vulnerability, limited research has jointly integrated energy efficiency and climate resilience within a unified decision-making framework for ASEAN economies. This study addresses this gap by developing an integrated decision-support framework that combines the CRITIC objective weighting method and the CRADIS multi-criteria ranking approach. By tracking 10 ASEAN economies across various energy and environmental dimensions, this model provides insight into balancing short-term economic benefits with the long-term resilience of the energy system. The results reveal pronounced heterogeneity across countries. The Philippines achieves the highest integrated performance, followed by Myanmar and Singapore, while Brunei, Malaysia, and Laos show wider gaps from the ideal benchmark. The CRITIC results indicate that climate risk, policy readiness, renewable energy transition, and efficiency-related investment are key factors differentiating ASEAN economies. Sensitivity analysis using alternative MCDM models, including VIKOR, TOPSIS, WASPAS, and ARAS, supports the robustness of the CRITIC-CRADIS framework. The findings contribute theoretically by embedding climate resilience into energy-efficiency assessment and empirically by offering a transparent, replicable, and data-driven tool for country-level prioritization. From a policy perspective, the results suggest that ASEAN economies should adopt differentiated strategies, including renewable energy expansion, grid modernization, energy-efficiency standards, climate-risk screening, green finance, and regional coordination to support climate-resilient energy transitions.