In this paper a description of the problem of medium-term operational planning of electrical systems is presented. It considers environmental impact and the derived challenges of analyzing the decision-making process by a multicriteria paradigm. The necessity of a new direction for the problem is outlined, an approach that attempts a greater integral quality of planning, instead of searching for a simple optimal solution. This process must be consistent with a wider and more suitable interpretation of environmental problem and concept of solution in the presence of uncertainty