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Carbon dioxide emission standards for US power plants: An efficiency analysis perspective

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  • Hampf, Benjamin
  • Rødseth, Kenneth Løvold

Abstract

On June 25, 2013, President Obama announced his plan to introduce carbon dioxide emission standards for electricity generation. This paper proposes an efficiency analysis approach that addresses which mission rates (and standards) would be feasible if the existing generating units adopt best practices. A new efficiency measure is introduced and further decomposed to identify different sources' contributions to emission rate improvements. Estimating two Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models - the well-known joint production model and the new materials balance model - on a dataset consisting of 160 bituminous-fired generating units, we find that the average generating unit's electricity-to-carbon dioxide ratio is 15.3 percent below the corresponding best-practice ratio. Further examinations reveal that this discrepancy can largely be attributed to non-discretionary factors and not to managerial inefficiency. Moreover, even if the best practice ratios could be implemented, the generating units would not be able to comply with the EPA's recently proposed carbon dioxide standard.

Suggested Citation

  • Hampf, Benjamin & Rødseth, Kenneth Løvold, 2014. "Carbon dioxide emission standards for US power plants: An efficiency analysis perspective," Darmstadt Discussion Papers in Economics 219, Darmstadt University of Technology, Department of Law and Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:darddp:219
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    Cited by:

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    2. Jeanneaux, Philippe & Latruffe, Laure, 2016. "Modelling pollution-generating technologies in performance benchmarking: Recent developments, limits and future prospects in the nonparametric frameworkAuthor-Name: Dakpo, K. Hervé," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 250(2), pages 347-359.
    3. K Hervé Dakpo & Philippe Jeanneaux & Laure Latruffe, 2014. "Inclusion of undesirable outputs in production technology modeling:The case of greenhouse gas emissions in French meat sheep farming," Working Papers SMART 14-08, INRAE UMR SMART.
    4. Roshdi, Israfil & Hasannasab, Maryam & Margaritis, Dimitris & Rouse, Paul, 2018. "Generalised weak disposability and efficiency measurement in environmental technologies," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 266(3), pages 1000-1012.
    5. Duan, Na & Guo, Jun-Peng & Xie, Bai-Chen, 2016. "Is there a difference between the energy and CO2 emission performance for China’s thermal power industry? A bootstrapped directional distance function approach," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 1552-1563.
    6. Lee, Chia-Yen, 2018. "Mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium in data envelopment analysis," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 266(3), pages 1013-1024.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Emission standards; Carbon dioxide emissions; Materials balance condition; Electricity generation; Weak G-disposability; Data Envelopment Analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • Q48 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Government Policy
    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity

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