IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sur/seedps/135.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Measuring energy efficiency and its contribution towards meeting CO2 targets: estimates for 29 OECD countries

Author

Listed:
  • Joanne Evans

    (Surrey Energy Economics Centre (SEEC), Department of Economics, University of Surrey)

  • Massimo Filippini

    (Centre for Energy Policy and Economics (cepe), ETH Zurich and Department of Economics, University of Lugano)

  • Lester C Hunt

    (Surrey Energy Economics Centre (SEEC) and Research Group on Lifestyles Values and Environment (RESOLVE), University of Surrey)

Abstract

Using results for 29 OECD countries from the estimation of an extended version of the model advocated by Filippini and Hunt (2011a), actual energy consumption and CO2 emissions are compared to notional energy consumption and CO2 emissions if the countries were energy efficient. This shows the contribution that improvements in energy efficiency can make towards the reduction in CO2 emissions. It is found that in many countries efficiency improvements alone are not likely to be sufficient to bring about reductions in CO2 emissions required to meet ambitious obligations. However, this is not the case across all countries included in the investigation. Moreover, it is shown that some of the world’s largest OECD emitters can make a significant contribution to CO2 reductions from becoming energy efficient. Therefore the negotiations of the new legally binding treaty agreed under the Durban Platform should promote emission reduction targets that incentivise national energy efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Joanne Evans & Massimo Filippini & Lester C Hunt, 2011. "Measuring energy efficiency and its contribution towards meeting CO2 targets: estimates for 29 OECD countries," Surrey Energy Economics Centre (SEEC), School of Economics Discussion Papers (SEEDS) 135, Surrey Energy Economics Centre (SEEC), School of Economics, University of Surrey.
    • Handle: RePEc:sur:seedps:135
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.som.surrey.ac.uk/seeds/SEEDS135.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Adeyemi, Olutomi I. & Hunt, Lester C., 2007. "Modelling OECD industrial energy demand: Asymmetric price responses and energy-saving technical change," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 693-709, July.
    2. Hunt, Lester C. & Judge, Guy & Ninomiya, Yasushi, 2003. "Underlying trends and seasonality in UK energy demand: a sectoral analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 93-118, January.
    3. Massimo Filippini & Lester C. Hunt, 2011. "Energy Demand and Energy Efficiency in the OECD Countries: A Stochastic Demand Frontier Approach," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 59-80.
    4. Lester C. Hunt & Guy Judge & Yasushi Ninomiya, 2003. "Modelling underlying energy demand trends," Chapters, in: Lester C. Hunt (ed.), Energy in a Competitive Market, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Jondrow, James & Knox Lovell, C. A. & Materov, Ivan S. & Schmidt, Peter, 1982. "On the estimation of technical inefficiency in the stochastic frontier production function model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2-3), pages 233-238, August.
    6. James M. Griffin & Craig T. Schulman, 2005. "Price Asymmetry in Energy Demand Models: A Proxy for Energy-Saving Technical Change?," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 1-22.
    7. Mehdi Farsi & Massimo Filippini & Michael Kuenzle, 2006. "Cost Efficiency in Regional Bus Companies: An Application of Alternative Stochastic Frontier Models," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 40(1), pages 95-118, January.
    8. Mehdi Farsi & Massimo Filippini & William Greene, 2005. "Efficiency Measurement in Network Industries: Application to the Swiss Railway Companies," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 69-90, July.
    9. Gilbert E. Metcalf, 2008. "An Empirical Analysis of Energy Intensity and Its Determinants at the State Level," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 3), pages 1-26.
    10. Kenneth B. Medlock, 2009. "Energy Demand Theory," Chapters, in: Joanne Evans & Lester C. Hunt (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Energy, chapter 5, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    11. Ang, B.W., 2006. "Monitoring changes in economy-wide energy efficiency: From energy-GDP ratio to composite efficiency index," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 574-582, March.
    12. Amy K. Richmond & Robert K. Kaufmann, 2006. "Energy Prices and Turning Points: The Relationship between Income and Energy Use/Carbon Emissions," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 4), pages 157-180.
    13. Richmond, Amy K. & Kaufmann, Robert K., 2006. "Is there a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and/or carbon emissions?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 176-189, February.
    14. Zofio, Jose L. & Prieto, Angel M., 2001. "Environmental efficiency and regulatory standards: the case of CO2 emissions from OECD industries," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 63-83, January.
    15. Zhou, P. & Ang, B.W. & Poh, K.L., 2008. "A survey of data envelopment analysis in energy and environmental studies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 189(1), pages 1-18, August.
    16. Sue Wing, Ian, 2008. "Explaining the declining energy intensity of the U.S. economy," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 21-49, January.
    17. Aigner, Dennis & Lovell, C. A. Knox & Schmidt, Peter, 1977. "Formulation and estimation of stochastic frontier production function models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1), pages 21-37, July.
    18. G.D. Ferrier & J. G. Hirschberg, 1992. "Climate Control Efficiency," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 1), pages 37-54.
    19. Greene, William, 2005. "Reconsidering heterogeneity in panel data estimators of the stochastic frontier model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 126(2), pages 269-303, June.
    20. Huntington, Hillard G., 1994. "Been top down so long it looks like bottom up to me," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(10), pages 833-839, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fischbacher, Urs & Schudy, Simeon & Teyssier, Sabrina, 2021. "Heterogeneous preferences and investments in energy saving measures," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    2. Sergej Vojtovic & Alina Stundziene & Rima Kontautiene, 2018. "The Impact of Socio-Economic Indicators on Sustainable Consumption of Domestic Electricity in Lithuania," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-21, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Joanne Evans & Massimo Filippini & Lester C. Hunt, 2013. "The contribution of energy efficiency towards meeting CO2 targets," Chapters, in: Roger Fouquet (ed.), Handbook on Energy and Climate Change, chapter 8, pages 175-223, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Filippini, Massimo & Hunt, Lester C., 2012. "US residential energy demand and energy efficiency: A stochastic demand frontier approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 1484-1491.
    3. Massimo Filippini & Lester C. Hunt, 2013. "'Underlying Energy Efficiency' in the US," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 13/181, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    4. Massimo Filippini & Lester C. Hunt, 2011. "Energy Demand and Energy Efficiency in the OECD Countries: A Stochastic Demand Frontier Approach," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 2), pages 59-80.
    5. Filippini, Massimo & Hunt, Lester C., 2015. "Measurement of energy efficiency based on economic foundations," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(S1), pages 5-16.
    6. Tajudeen, Ibrahim A., 2021. "The underlying drivers of economy-wide energy efficiency and asymmetric energy price responses," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    7. Manuel Llorca & José Baños & José Somoza & Pelayo Arbués, 2017. "A Stochastic Frontier Analysis Approach for Estimating Energy Demand and Efficiency in the Transport Sector of Latin America and the Caribbean," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Number 5).
    8. Lundgren, Tommy & Marklund, Per-Olov & Zhang, Shanshan, 2016. "Industrial energy demand and energy efficiency – Evidence from Sweden," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 130-152.
    9. Zhang, Lin, 2017. "Correcting the uneven burden sharing of emission reduction across provinces in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 335-345.
    10. Pedro Linares & Xavier Labandeira, 2010. "Energy Efficiency: Economics And Policy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 573-592, July.
    11. Farsi, Mehdi & Filippini, Massimo, 2009. "An analysis of cost efficiency in Swiss multi-utilities," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 306-315, March.
    12. Mehdi Farsi & Massimo Filippini & William Greene, 2006. "Application Of Panel Data Models In Benchmarking Analysis Of The Electricity Distribution Sector," Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 77(3), pages 271-290, September.
    13. Llorca, Manuel & Baños, José & Somoza, José & Arbués, Pelayo, 2014. "A latent class approach for estimating energy demands and efficiency in transport: An application to Latin America and the Caribbean," Efficiency Series Papers 2014/04, University of Oviedo, Department of Economics, Oviedo Efficiency Group (OEG).
    14. Farsi, Mehdi & Filippini, Massimo & Kuenzle, Michael, 2007. "Cost efficiency in the Swiss gas distribution sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 64-78, January.
    15. Sharimakin, Akinsehinwa & Glass, Anthony J. & Saal, David S. & Glass, Karligash, 2018. "Dynamic multilevel modelling of industrial energy demand in Europe," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 120-130.
    16. Growitsch, Christian & Jamasb, Tooraj & Wetzel, Heike, 2012. "Efficiency effects of observed and unobserved heterogeneity: Evidence from Norwegian electricity distribution networks," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 542-548.
    17. Jens Ewald & Thomas Sterner & Eoin Ó Broin & Érika Mata, 2021. "Saving energy in residential buildings: the role of energy pricing," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 167(1), pages 1-20, July.
    18. Lampe, Hannes W. & Hilgers, Dennis, 2015. "Trajectories of efficiency measurement: A bibliometric analysis of DEA and SFA," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 240(1), pages 1-21.
    19. Banfi, Silvia & Filippini, Massimo, 2010. "Resource rent taxation and benchmarking--A new perspective for the Swiss hydropower sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 2302-2308, May.
    20. Badunenko, Oleg & Galeotti, Marzio & Hunt, Lester C., 2021. "Better to grow or better to improve? Measuring environmental efficiency in OECD countries with a Stochastic Environmental Kuznets Frontier," FEEM Working Papers 316226, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    emissions; energy efficiency; Durban Platform.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • Q50 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - General
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sur:seedps:135. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mona Chitnis (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eesuruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.