Energy and environmental efficiency of China's regional electric power industry by considering renewable energy constraints

Abstract

The renewable electricity quota standard (RES) policy plays an important role in achieving sustainable and green development targets. Thus, it is essential to measure the sustainability of the electric power sectors in the context of RES. In terms of the energy and environmental efficiency (EEE) measurements, few studies divided energy inputs into renewable and non-renewable energy or explored the restricted problem of minimizing resource summation. To fill these gaps, we propose an improved fix-sum energy input data envelopment analysis (FSIDEA) model based on the adjustment strategy of weighted sum minimization of renewable energy inputs. The assurance region (AR) restriction and renewable energy input sum constraint (IC) are, respectively, imposed on the FSIDEA model to achieve the common equilibrium effective frontier (EEF). Finally, this study assesses the EEE of the electric power sectors in China's 30 main regions based on the common EEF. The result reveals that Beijing and Shanghai can be selected as benchmarks after efficiency comparison. In addition, our proposed model can compressively rank all decision-making units (DMUs) compared with traditional efficiency models.