integrated value assessment using paired comparisons abstract a survey methodology is described which uses paired comparisons in combination with contingent valuation to assess individuals values concerning the conservation of a rare mammal species the mountain pygmy possum burramys parvus value expressions which can be accommodated by economic theory are distinguished from those which are best represented by a noncompensatory preference structure a procedure for aggregating data involving these two categories of value expression is described this integrated value assessment is more inclusive than the conventional approach of using contingent valuation and other economic data within a benefit cost framework a comprehensive assessment of the value implications of a proposal can be undertaken in which the actual rather than assumed structures of individuals values are taken into account

energy consumption and economic growth new insights into the cointegration relationship abstract this paper examines the long run relationship between energy consumption and real gdp including energy prices for 25 oecd countries from 1981 to 2007 the distinction between common factors and idiosyncratic components using principal component analysis allows to distinguish between developments on an international and a national level as drivers of the long run relationship indeed cointegration between the common components of the underlying variables indicates that international developments dominate the long run relationship between energy consumption and real gdp furthermore the results suggest that energy consumption is price inelastic causality tests indicate the presence of a bi directional causal relationship between energy consumption and economic growth

co2 emissions energy consumption and economic growth in bric countries abstract this paper examines dynamic causal relationships between pollutant emissions energy consumption and output for a panel of bric countries over the period 1971 2005 except for russia 1990 2005 in long run equilibrium energy consumption has a positive and statistically significant impact on emissions while real output exhibits the inverted u shape pattern associated with the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis with the threshold income of 5 393 in logarithms in the short term changes in emissions are driven mostly by the error correction term and short term energy consumption shocks as opposed to short term output shocks for each country short term deviations from the long term equilibrium take from 0 770 years russia to 5 848 years brazil to correct the panel causality results indicate there are energy consumption emissions bidirectional strong causality and energy consumption output bidirectional long run causality along with unidirectional both strong and short run causalities from emissions and energy consumption respectively to output overall in order to reduce emissions and not to adversely affect economic growth increasing both energy supply investment and energy efficiency and stepping up energy conservation policies to reduce unnecessary wastage of energy can be initiated for energy dependent bric countries

efficiency analysis of chinese industry a directional distance function approach two efficiency measures of chinese industry were estimated at the provincial level from 1994 to 2002 using a directional output distance function one is a traditional efficiency measure that considers only desirable output while the other considers both desirable and undesirable outputs simultaneously a comparison of the two measures revealed that efficiency levels are biased only if desirable output is considered five coastal provinces municipalities that have attracted a large amount of foreign direct investment are found to be the most efficient when only desirable output is considered and also when both desirable and undesirable outputs are considered however omitting undesirable output tends to lead to an overestimate of industrial efficiency levels in shandong sichuan and hebei provinces we also found that a province s industrial structure has significant effects on its efficiency levels

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

energy efficiency in china s iron and steel industry evidence and policy implications abstract currently the iron and steel industry isi accounts for more than 16 of china s total energy consumption improving energy efficiency ee and promoting energy savings in this industry have vital significance for china s further sustainable development using provincial panel data from 2000 to 2014 and meta frontier data envelopment analysis dea this paper investigates ee and the energy saving potential ep of china s isi by considering regional technology heterogeneities the results show that 1 from 2001 to 2014 ee in china s isi achieved significant improvement technological progress is the most powerful driving factor while the declines in scale efficiency and pure technical efficiency are two obstructive factors 2 the sources of energy inefficiency ei show distinct spatial difference characteristics ei in the eastern region mainly stems from scale inefficiency and pure technical inefficiency while that in the central and western regions stems from three aspects of scale inefficiency pure technical inefficiency and technology gap and 3 there is considerable ep in china s isi which represents nearly 80 of isi s current total energy consumption because the sources of ep vary across regions the focus of future work for china s regional isi should also vary

measuring energy efficiency in the context of an emerging economy the case of indian manufacturing in recent years the indian economy has achieved a rapid growth rate however one of the challenges facing the economy is the large energy supply that would be needed to sustain this growth path hence attaining energy efficiency is crucial for the economy this paper examines the indian manufacturing sector and utilizes a variant of the directional distance function to obtain comprehensive measures of performance of the major manufacturing states given the joint goals of achieving energy conservation and output growth the results of the empirical application reveal that given the prevailing technology the average manufacturing firm across the states could reduce energy input and increase output simultaneously by an annual average of 3 84 by improving technical efficiency to accommodate a larger simultaneous increase in output and reduction in energy use india should adopt superior technologies so as to shift the efficient frontier outward

alternative measures of environmental technology structure in dea an application abstract the nonparametric data envelopment analysis dea literature on environmental efficiency ee considers handling undesirable outputs in two alternative ways either in their original forms with the assumption that these are weakly disposable or in various translated forms with the assumption that these are strongly disposable choosing a particular approach implies adoption of a particular distinct treatment of undesirable outputs and hence yields a distinct set of ee estimates to explore the effects of the interplay between choice of ee measure and specific treatment of undesirable outputs this paper attempts to generate all possible output oriented ee measures based on these two alternative approaches furthermore guided by the argument that slacks are important in identifying properly the efficiency behavior of firms it proposes two new alternative slacks based formulations of ee one based on the range directional model and the other on the generalized proportional distance function model using a confected data set of ten firms and a real life data set of 22 oecd countries our empirical analysis reveals that first ee scores are influenced not only by the choice of disposability assumption for undesirable outputs but also by the way these are treated in various translated forms second the choice of any particular treatment of undesirable outputs plays no role in influencing the rankings of firms and third our two new alternative ee formulations are at the least viable alternatives to existing ee measures in ranking firms according to their eco efficiency behavior

dynamic governance of clean energy markets how technical innovation could accelerate climate policies abstract this article explores the governmental means to accelerate technical progress in climate protection it is based on selected best practice cases in which the diffusion of low carbon technologies has been accelerated by ambitious policies the empirical cases involve not just renewable energies but also energy efficiency the latter being considered more difficult in terms of governance the examples are taken from advanced oecd countries as well as from emerging economies this article will explore which factors have caused this dynamic development the conclusion reached will show that the interaction of positive feedback mechanisms which has already been described as virtuous cycle provides only a plausible theoretical explanation if the policy cycle is added to the market cycle and the innovation cycle climate policy should not only define ambitious targets but also address all three feedback mechanisms

economic growth energy conservation and emissions reduction a comparative analysis based on panel data for 8 asian pacific countries this study was conducted to evaluate the causality between energy consumption gdp growth and carbon emissions for eight asia pacific countries from 1971 to 2005 using the panel data the results indicate that there are long run equilibrium relationships between these variables additionally causality from energy consumption to co2 emissions was observed generally but there were some opposite relationships also parameter estimations of the panel data model indicate that there are great differences in the carbon emissions the efficiencies of energy use carbon emissions of unit gdp and unit energy consumption between developed and developing countries the base carbon emissions per capita energy consumption and efficiency of energy use in developing countries are far lower than in developed countries however the co2 emissions per unit of energy use is higher although developing countries may reduce their co2 emission per unit energy use total energy consumption will rise rapidly with economic development thus developing countries must determine how to undergo economic growth while conserving energy and reducing emissions to respond to global climate change it is necessary to develop innovative technology for energy use transform the energy structure and conduct the clean development mechanism

energy efficiency evolution of china s paper industry abstract china s paper industry accounts for a larger proportion of the global paper industry and consumes large amounts of energy energy conservation and pollution reduction of the industry have become the focus of china s national development strategy energy efficiency is an important index which directly determines the amounts of energy consumption and pollution emissions to understand the energy efficiency evolution of china s paper industry this paper establishes an input output data of the paper industry for 29 provinces in china and applies dea method and econometric models to estimate and comprehensively discuss the energy efficiency issues based on the framework of total factor efficiency our results indicate that china s paper industry has a large energy saving potential even though its energy efficiency has improved during the period 1990 2013 the saving potential is about 65 under the meta frontier and 44 under the group frontier moreover there are significant differences between different regions in production technology and energy efficiency the performance of eastern china is better than other regions but the technology gaps between the different regions are shrinking and converging over time finally some policy recommendations are proposed to improve the energy efficiency of the industry

using data envelopment analysis for estimating energy saving and undesirable output abatement a case study in the organization for economic co operation and development oecd countries abstract environmental protection is one of the main concerns of the international community countries show meticulous attention to environmental issues by considering eco efficiency the eco efficiency evaluation of countries is a complex and multidisciplinary topic data envelopment analysis has widely been applied to measure the eco efficiency of organization for economic co operation and development countries in previous studies energy inputs have not been contemplated the subject becomes more important when there are non discretionary factors in this paper the eco efficiency of countries in the organization for economic co operation and development is assessed given energy inputs undesirable outputs and non discretionary factors to this end slack based and range adjusted measures are extended also new environmental indices are introduced the relationship between consumption of energy inputs and production of undesirable outputs can be addressed by two new environmental indices spearman correlation test indicates a direct and positive relationship between potential of energy saving and potential of undesirable output abatement france germany luxemburg norway sweden and the united kingdom are recognized as eco efficient countries south korea and italy have the highest and lowest potential for energy saving respectively poland and iceland are countries with the highest and lowest potential for undesirable output abatement respectively it can be concluded that countries producing high undesirable outputs may not operate eco efficiently and thus have an extreme potential to save the optimum energy moreover countries consuming low energy may operate eco efficiently and have a low potential to reduce undesirable outputs

total factor energy efficiency of regions in china abstract this paper analyzes energy efficiencies of 29 administrative regions in china for the period 1995 2002 with a newly introduced index most existing studies of regional productivity and efficiency neglect energy inputs we use the data envelopment analysis dea to find the target energy input of each region in china at each particular year the index of total factor energy efficiency tfee then divides the target energy input by the actual energy input in our dea model labor capital stock energy consumption and total sown area of farm crops used as a proxy of biomass energy are the four inputs and real gdp is the single output the conventional energy productivity ratio regarded as a partial factor energy efficiency index is computed for comparison in contrast to tfee our index is found fitting better to the real case according to the tfee index rankings the central area of china has the worst energy efficiency and its total adjustmentof energy consumption amount is over half of china s total regional tfee in china generally improved during the research period except for the western area a u shape relation between the area s tfee and per capita income in the areas of china is found confirming the scenario that energy efficiency eventually improves with economic growth

genco s risk based maintenance outage scheduling this paper presents a stochastic model for the optimal risk based generation maintenance outage scheduling based on hourly price based unit commitment in a generation company genco such maintenance outage schedules will be submitted by gencos to the iso for approval before implementation the objective of a genco is to consider financial risks when scheduling its midterm maintenance outages the genco also coordinates its proposed outage scheduling with short term unit commitment for maximizing payoffs the proposed model is a stochastic mixed integer linear program in which random hourly prices of energy ancillary services and fuel are modeled as scenarios in the monte carlo method financial risks associated with price uncertainty are considered by applying expected downside risks which are incorporated explicitly as constraints this paper shows that gencos could decrease financial risks by adjusting expected payoffs illustrative examples show the calculation of genco s midterm generation maintenance schedule risk level hourly unit commitment and hourly dispatch for bidding into energy and ancillary services markets

room for improvement in low carbon economies of g7 and brics countries based on the analysis of energy efficiency and environmental kuznets curves abstract carbon emissions which are nowadays targeted for significant reduction cause global warming with climate change producing a series of side effects including economic losses and ecological extinction the data envelopment analysis approach has recently been employed for environmental estimations the target of this study is to introduce a new data envelopment analysis method in order to provide environmental improvement suggestions this study measures the room for improvements in low carbon economies of g7 group and brics group based on the analysis of energy efficiency and environmental kuznets curves the main findings are as follows i the g7 group has greater room for improvement in its carbonization value than the brics group before 2005 however the latter has greater room for improvement in carbonization value than the former after 2005 ii countries with the backfire effect of a high carbon economy include germany italy and south africa iii during the data period three environmental kuznets curves including energy intensity emission intensity and carbonization value do not satisfy the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis that the curves are inverted u shaped on the contrary the three environmental kuznets curves in this study are u shaped

the marginal and double threshold effects of regional innovation on energy consumption structure evidence from resource based regions in china abstract innovation driven energy consumption structure optimisation is crucial in developing countries china as a typical developing country has been shifting its economic development model from a traditional approach to innovation driven high quality development we select nine resource based regions in china as our research subject and employ a varying coefficient panel model and a hansen panel threshold model to quantify the marginal and threshold effects of innovation capacity in optimising energy consumption structure the results indicate that the overall energy consumption structure index for the analysed regions is 0 563 revealing that the structure is rather low and regional economic development relies mainly on low ranked energy astonishingly the marginal effect reflects obvious heterogeneity a positive effect in sichuan 0 208 yunnan 0 207 and xinjiang 0 431 nearly no effect in chongqing gansu and qinghai and a negative effect in guangxi 0 104 shaanxi 0 244 and ningxia 1 282 in previous studies such negative effects have been totally ignored further there are double thresholds and a unique driving mechanism namely negative driving strong positive driving weak positive driving interestingly below the first threshold improvement in innovation will lead to energy consumption structure degradation current policies such as introducing extensive talent are not feasible for all resource based regions the concerns of policy making for the three different threshold intervals should be upgrading industrial structures optimising the structure of human resources and preventing brain drain respectively

electricity consumption in g7 countries a panel cointegration analysis of residential demand elasticities this article applies recently developed panel unit root and panel cointegration techniques to estimate the long run and short run income and price elasticities for residential demand for electricity in g7 countries the panel results indicate that in the long run residential demand for electricity is price elastic and income inelastic the study concludes that from an environmental perspective there is potential to use pricing policies in the g7 countries to curtail residential electricity demand and thus curb carbon emissions in the long run

total factor energy efficiency in developing countries this paper uses a total factor framework to investigate energy efficiency in 23 developing countries during the period of 1980 2005 we explore the total factor energy efficiency and change trends by applying data envelopment analysis dea window which is capable of measuring efficiency in cross sectional and time varying data the empirical results indicate that botswana mexico and panama perform the best in terms of energy efficiency whereas kenya sri lanka syria and the philippines perform the worst during the entire research period seven countries show little change in energy efficiency over time eleven countries experienced continuous decreases in energy efficiency among five countries witnessing continuous increase in total factor energy efficiency china experienced the most rapid rise practice in china indicates that effective energy policies play a crucial role in improving energy efficiency tobit regression analysis indicates that a u shaped relationship exists between total factor energy efficiency and income per capita

barriers to increasing energy efficiency evidence from small and medium sized enterprises in china abstract this paper analyzes financial informational and organizational barriers to energy efficiency investments for small and medium sized enterprises smes in china its findings are based on a survey of 480 smes in zhejiang province and complemented by semi structured interviews with enterprises contained in the survey sample responses reveal that only a minority of smes in china actively perform energy saving activities at a significant level the survey data suggest further that informational barriers are the core bottleneck inhibiting energy efficiency improvements in china s sme sector financial and organizational barriers also influence a company s energy saving activities with interview based evidence stronger than statistical evidence the interviews point out three additional barriers to energy saving activities the role of family ownership structures lax enforcement of government regulations and the absence of government support as well as a lack of skilled labor more than 40 of enterprises in the sample declared themselves unaware of energy saving equipment or practices in their respective business area indicating that there are high transaction costs for smes to gather assess and apply information about energy saving potentials and relevant technologies one policy implication of the study is that the chinese government could play a more active role in fostering the dissemination of energy efficiency related information in the sme sector

industrial energy efficiency with co2 emissions in china a nonparametric analysis abstract global awareness on energy security and climate change has created much interest in assessing economy wide energy efficiency performance a number of previous studies have contributed to evaluate energy efficiency performance using different analytical techniques among which data envelopment analysis dea has recently received increasing attention most of dea related energy efficiency studies do not consider undesirable outputs such as co 2 emissions in their modeling framework which may lead to biased energy efficiency values within a joint production framework of desirable and undesirable outputs in this paper we construct both static and dynamic energy efficiency performance indexes for measuring industrial energy efficiency performance by using several environmental dea models with co 2 emissions the dynamic energy efficiency performance indexes have further been decomposed into two contributing components we finally apply the indexes proposed to assess the industrial energy efficiency performance of different provinces in china over time our empirical study shows that the energy efficiency improvement in china s industrial sector was mainly driven by technological improvement

energy efficiency analysis of g7 and brics considering total factor structure abstract energy is the driving force of world economy with the increase in the world s population and consumption additional efforts must be made to guarantee energy availability for all economies and consequently to avoid a number of serious problems related to its scarcity therefore measures to ensure energy efficiency are now a priority for any nation willing to develop its economy given the fast economic development seen in the brics group which has played an important role in the global economy the objective of this study is to measure and analyze energy efficiency in the countries that comprise the brics group brazil russia india china and south africa and the g7 group canada france germany italy japan united kingdom and united states considering the total factor structure for this data envelopment analysis was used with slacks based measure model and the window analysis and the total factor energy efficiency index was calculated from the slacks provided by this tool for the countries analyzed the model used as inputs gross fixed capital formation and workforce and energy consumption additionally two outputs were used carbon dioxide emissions undesirable output and gross domestic product desired output moreover the factors that lead to better energy efficiency measures were sought using an econometric model the results indicate that the brics and g7 are statistically different groups and therefore justify being analyzed separately energy efficiency in brics ranged from 23 54 to 99 95 with brazil as the country which had the highest total factor energy efficiency index in the analysis performed for the g7 group every country had a total factor energy efficiency index above 95 the tobit model was used and the results show that patents are significant for energy efficiency in the brics countries while in the g7 countries the gross domestic product per capita measured by purchasing power parity life expectancy and years of schooling are significant these findings indicate that in the brics countries the results of energy efficiency measures are more related to investments in low energy consumption technologies while in the g7 countries the energy efficiency tends to be better when countries have better social conditions which in addition to high life expectancy ensures a fair income distribution the results of this study are important in terms of being useful for public policies related to energy efficiency especially 1 to contribute to the discussions related to evaluating the countries energy use helping to identify those with the best practices with regard to environmental and economic aspects in each group and 2 to guide policy decisions regarding government incentives to promote the development of efficient countries in terms of economic growth with minimal use of resources capital labor energy without harming the environment

eco efficiency analysis of power plants an extension of data envelopment analysis abstract in public discussion on environmental policy the notion of eco efficiency is often used the joint production of goods and undesirable outputs such as pollutants which may not be freely disposable without costs causes difficulties to measure the overall performance of the firm because of the absence of market prices for the undesirable outputs we are not able to estimate the environmental costs some of the measurement and evaluation difficulties can be overcome by employing data envelopment analysis dea as the efficiency measurement vehicle we propose the use of two different approaches in the first approach we start by decomposing the problem into two parts 1 the problem of measuring technical efficiency as the relation of the desirable outputs to the inputs and 2 the problem of measuring so called ecological efficiency as the relation of the desirable outputs to the undesirable outputs separately those two efficiency indicators are then combined in the second approach we treat pollutants as the inputs in the sense that we wish to increase desirable outputs and decrease pollutants and inputs the approaches are applied to the problem of measuring the efficiency of 24 power plants in a european country

co2 emissions and logistics performance a composite index proposal abstract the importance of good logistics performance for low no fossil carbon economies is widely recognized especially because the transport sector is responsible for a substantial portion of the world s greenhouse gas emissions this research evaluates efficiency in the relationship between transport logistics performance as measured by the logistics performance index lpi and co2 emissions from the transport sector the slacks based measure sbm of the data envelopment analysis dea was used to construct a low carbon logistics performance index lclpi ranking a group of 104 countries that were selected using the available data the empirical model adopted one input co2 emissions for the transport sector and seven outputs gross domestic product gdp and the six components of the lpi gdp has been included as a non discretionary output because co2 emissions are directly dependent on a country s economic production while the lpi is a qualifier to evaluate how the composite index evolved over time we used an approach that combines the techniques of window analysis and the malmquist index considering the dea results the countries that performed best in terms of the lclpi were japan germany togo benin and the united states and the more evolved countries were luxemburg ireland lebanon and honduras for the purposes of lclpi validation and analysis the performances of the brics brazil russia india china and south africa countries were analyzed especially china which is the world s second largest co2 emitter the proposed composite index and the ranking of countries in terms of logistics performance and co2 emissions can help identify the best performing countries in low carbon logistics