Energy is an inevitable necessity for human beings. But the energy source is predicted to be scarce in the coming years as a result of population growth. Therefore people prefer energy sources that are renewable, clean and cost effective. Unfortunately there is not a sole energy source to meet these demands. Determination of the appropriate energy policy problem with interactive criteria and alternatives can be viewed as a multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) problem within the context of the long range and strategic process. The analytic network process (ANP), one of MCDM methods, deals with the dependency and feedback that the problem has. The goal of this paper is to apply the ANP model to evaluate the alternative energy sources for the country. Finally when the results are discussed, it is apparent that the model can produce reasonable and applicable solutions for the case. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.