Abstract
Renewable Energy Communities (RECs) need performance-based methods to share locally generated energy to prevent free-riding, incentivize consumer behavior, and improve overall social well-being through sector interaction. We tackle the challenge of ranking REC members for local energy allocation factor purposes, based on multidimensional household waste sorting performance, where efficiency changes over time and trade-offs exist among waste streams. We created a ranking system that balances stability (for fairness) with responsiveness (to reward improvement), compensating the REC manager promoter (municipality). The method combines historical frontier analysis with Mahalanobis distance, following: (1) DEA-derived weights to combine inputs, (2) temporal frontiers for each waste stream, (3) projects current performance onto past benchmarks with a customized rolling window, (4) calculates multivariate z-scores through Mahalanobis distance, and (5) ranks members by their statistical distance from historical norms. The proposed methodology enhancement is verified with synthetic data from 30 households over 14 months, with 8 evaluation periods. It shows 71.4% rank category stability compared to 49.0% for monthly DEA, a 22.4 percentage point increase, while still detecting performance changes. The system accounts for output correlations, with mostly positive links between waste streams ((Formula presented) glass-packages, (Formula presented) glass-organic). Mahalanobis distance fairly rewards balanced performance across related dimensions. Sensitivity tests indicate that the approach is robust to variations in parameter choices. The framework provides a straightforward computational method (<1 s per evaluation) that yields rankings with statistical significance for consumer communication. It is the first framework designed specifically for temporal performance ranking in incentive allocation. © 2026 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/