Abstract: The modern coal chemical industry is a resource-intensive, technology-intensive and investment-intensive industry with relatively high risk. With the adoption of AHP as a tool for analysis and a case study, the article conducts an assessment regarding the different investment risk factors. With the building of an index system for risk assessment, the level and weight of each index are defined and more than that, a further analysis is carried out explaining the reasons behind. Finally the overall risk value is calculated. The result shows that certain risk factors like the micro level project investment returns, the maturity of certain technologies and the lack of professional talents yield greater influence than others. An enterprise could make comparison between the overall risk value and the critical value it has pre-defined so as to provide reference for investment decision-making.

Key words: modern coal chemical industry, risk, measurement, analytic hierarchy process