Storing energy allows both the efficiency and availability of renewable energy to be increased, thus dissociating actual from expected generation and from consumption demands. Compressed air energy storage (hereinafter CAES') enables the efficient and cost-effective storage of large amounts of energy, achieving a capacity of over 100MWh. There are several geological structures that can be used as CAES, among which the use and construction of salt domes are particularly noteworthy. However, there is a high exploration risk associated with subsurface exploration. To this end, it is advisable to establish a detailed schedule to select and characterize structures, with the purpose of minimizing the aforementioned risk. Multi-criteria algorithms can be used to establish a hierarchy of the alternatives and to identify the structures with the greatest potential with an objective approach. The analytic hierarchy process method is used in this paper as the selection algorithm, which is based on identifying and assessing criteria and weighting each criterion. In accordance with the analytic hierarchy process method, the goal was divided into a series of different level criteria, defining a breakdown structure of the problem to select salt domes. This paper defines a structure hierarchization method that allows the objective establishment of the areas with the highest potential for CAES, considering both technical and socioeconomic factors. Therefore, a supporting decision-making method may be established to reduce the exploration risk associated with underground structures. Copyright (c) 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.