IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v146y2020ics0301421520305498.html

Four reasons why there is so much confusion about energy efficiency

Author

Listed:
  • Goh, Tian
  • Ang, B.W.

Abstract

Energy efficiency is one of the key goals in energy and climate policies. However, it is known to be difficult to define and measure. In the literature, there are many debates on the appropriate way to measure energy efficiency performance for policy development. There is also a fair share of confusion over how different energy efficiency performance estimates should be interpreted. We discuss the sources of contention by examining different definitions, methods, measures and policy objectives that are used to evaluate energy efficiency. The objective is to present the different results and purposes in a systematic manner within the broader end goal of improving national energy efficiency. A clearer picture of the underlying assumptions, boundaries and perspectives behind energy efficiency performance is important for policy assessment. With this larger goal in mind, we conclude that policymakers are free to choose any definition, method and measure for analysis. However, results should be interpreted with respect to the method, assumptions, limitations and context that they were developed for. Specifically, differences in results at different levels of analysis should be studied in detail to understand the challenges faced in translating efficiency improvements at the device, process and sub-sector levels to national level improvements.

Suggested Citation

  • Goh, Tian & Ang, B.W., 2020. "Four reasons why there is so much confusion about energy efficiency," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:146:y:2020:i:c:s0301421520305498
    DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111832
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421520305498
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111832?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stepp, Matthew D. & Winebrake, James J. & Hawker, J. Scott & Skerlos, Steven J., 2009. "Greenhouse gas mitigation policies and the transportation sector: The role of feedback effects on policy effectiveness," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(7), pages 2774-2787, July.
    2. Li, Ming-Jia & Tao, Wen-Quan, 2017. "Review of methodologies and polices for evaluation of energy efficiency in high energy-consuming industry," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 203-215.
    3. repec:aen:journl:2011v32-02-a03 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Weber, Lukas, 1997. "Some reflections on barriers to the efficient use of energy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(10), pages 833-835, August.
    5. Stephenson, Janet & Barton, Barry & Carrington, Gerry & Gnoth, Daniel & Lawson, Rob & Thorsnes, Paul, 2010. "Energy cultures: A framework for understanding energy behaviours," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 6120-6129, October.
    6. Zhou, P. & Ang, B.W., 2008. "Linear programming models for measuring economy-wide energy efficiency performance," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 2901-2906, August.
    7. Filippini, Massimo & Hunt, Lester C. & Zorić, Jelena, 2014. "Impact of energy policy instruments on the estimated level of underlying energy efficiency in the EU residential sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 73-81.
    8. Bossanyi, Ervin, 1979. "UK primary energy consumption and the changing structure of final demand," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 253-258, September.
    9. Hang, Leiming & Tu, Meizeng, 2007. "The impacts of energy prices on energy intensity: Evidence from China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 2978-2988, May.
    10. Chung, William, 2011. "Review of building energy-use performance benchmarking methodologies," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 88(5), pages 1470-1479, May.
    11. Song, Feng & Zheng, Xinye, 2012. "What drives the change in China's energy intensity: Combining decomposition analysis and econometric analysis at the provincial level," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 445-453.
    12. Ang, B.W. & Goh, Tian, 2018. "Bridging the gap between energy-to-GDP ratio and composite energy intensity index," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 105-112.
    13. Ian Ayres & Sophie Raseman & Alice Shih, 2009. "Evidence from Two Large Field Experiments that Peer Comparison Feedback Can Reduce Residential Energy Usage," NBER Working Papers 15386, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. repec:aen:journl:1999v20-03-a06 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Lopes, M.A.R. & Antunes, C.H. & Martins, N., 2012. "Energy behaviours as promoters of energy efficiency: A 21st century review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 4095-4104.
    16. Patterson, M.G., 1993. "An accounting framework for decomposing the energy-to-GDP ratio into its structural components of change," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 18(7), pages 741-761.
    17. Wang, Haichao & Yin, Wusong & Abdollahi, Elnaz & Lahdelma, Risto & Jiao, Wenling, 2015. "Modelling and optimization of CHP based district heating system with renewable energy production and energy storage," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 401-421.
    18. Velasco-Fernández, Raúl & Dunlop, Tessa & Giampietro, Mario, 2020. "Fallacies of energy efficiency indicators: Recognizing the complexity of the metabolic pattern of the economy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    19. Rose, A. & Chen, C. Y., 1991. "Sources of change in energy use in the U.S. economy, 1972-1982 : A structural decomposition analysis," Resources and Energy, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 1-21, April.
    20. Wang, H. & Ang, B.W. & Su, Bin, 2017. "Assessing drivers of economy-wide energy use and emissions: IDA versus SDA," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 585-599.
    21. repec:aen:journl:2004v25-01-a04 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. 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.
    23. 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.
    24. Asian Development Bank (ADB) & Asian Development Bank (ADB) & Asian Development Bank (ADB) & Asian Development Bank (ADB), 2015. "Sustainable Energy for All: Tracking Progress in Asia and the Pacific: A Summary Report," ADB Reports RPT157630-2, Asian Development Bank (ADB).
    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. Sedat Alataş & Burcu Hiçyılmaz & Etem Karakaya, 2024. "Material demand and material efficiency for sustainable development in the European Union countries: A stochastic frontier analysis," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(1), pages 166-183, February.
    2. Chen, Ruoyu & Steinbuks, Jevgenijs, 2024. "Assessing the potential for energy efficiency improvements in Latin America and Caribbean," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    3. Karakaya, Etem & Alataş, Sedat & Erkara, Elif & Mert, Betül & Akdoğan, Tuğba & Hiçyılmaz, Burcu, 2024. "The rebound effect of material and energy efficiency for the EU and its major trading partners," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    4. Fernández-Amador, Octavio & Francois, Joseph F. & Oberdabernig, Doris A. & Tomberger, Patrick, 2023. "Energy footprints and the international trade network: A new dataset. Is the European Union doing it better?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 204(PA).
    5. Justice Gyimah & Ogochukwu Nneka Uchenwoke & Carlos Nehemias Maposse & George Nyantakyi, 2026. "Enhancing Green Environment Through Carbon Mitigation: the Mediation Role of Renewable Energy," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 17(1), pages 1726-1757, February.
    6. Adekoya, Oluwasegun B. & Kenku, Oluwademilade T. & Oliyide, Johnson A. & Al-Faryan, Mamdouh Abdulaziz Saleh & Ogunjemilua, Oluwafemi D., 2023. "Does economic complexity drive energy efficiency and renewable energy transition?," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 278(C).
    7. repec:osf:osfxxx:9cf3a_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Serhan Cevik & Kelly Gao, 2026. "Reaching (Beyond) the frontier: energy efficiency in Europe," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 53(1), pages 149-166, February.
    9. Xufeng Su & Xiaodong Yang & Jinning Zhang & Jinling Yan & Junfeng Zhao & Jianliang Shen & Qiying Ran, 2021. "Analysis of the Impacts of Economic Growth Targets and Marketization on Energy Efficiency: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-17, April.
    10. Aktar, Asikha & Alam, Md. Mahmudul & Harun, Mukaramah, 2022. "Energy Efficiency Policies in Malaysia: A Critical Evaluation from the Sustainable Development Perspective," OSF Preprints 9cf3a, Center for Open Science.
    11. Su, Bin & Goh, Tian & Ang, B.W. & Ng, Tsan Sheng, 2022. "Energy consumption and energy efficiency trends in Singapore: The case of a meticulously planned city," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    12. Ali, Mohammed & Evans, Steve, 2025. "The impact of best practice on energy efficiency in industrial decarbonization policy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).

    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. 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.
    2. Du, Minzhe & Wang, Bing & Zhang, Ning, 2018. "National research funding and energy efficiency: Evidence from the National Science Foundation of China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 335-346.
    3. Salvatori, Simone & Benedetti, Miriam & Bonfà, Francesca & Introna, Vito & Ubertini, Stefano, 2018. "Inter-sectorial benchmarking of compressed air generation energy performance: Methodology based on real data gathering in large and energy-intensive industrial firms," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 266-280.
    4. Pillai N., Vijayamohanan & AM, Narayanan, 2019. "Energy Efficiency Indicators: Estimation Methods," MPRA Paper 97653, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. 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.
    6. Pillai N., Vijayamohanan & AM, Narayanan, 2019. "Energy Efficiency: A Sectoral Analysis for Kerala," MPRA Paper 101424, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. 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.
    8. Filippini, Massimo & Hunt, Lester C., 2015. "Measurement of energy efficiency based on economic foundations," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(S1), pages 5-16.
    9. Yang, Guangfei & Li, Wenli & Wang, Jianliang & Zhang, Dongqing, 2016. "A comparative study on the influential factors of China's provincial energy intensity," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 74-85.
    10. Lei Jiang & Henk Folmer & Minhe Ji & Jianjun Tang, 2017. "Energy efficiency in the Chinese provinces: a fixed effects stochastic frontier spatial Durbin error panel analysis," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 58(2), pages 301-319, March.
    11. Tajudeen, Ibrahim A., 2021. "The underlying drivers of economy-wide energy efficiency and asymmetric energy price responses," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    12. repec:aen:journl:ej38-5-llorca is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Hongzhou Li & Andrea Appolloni & Yijie Dou & Vincenzo Basile & Maria Kopsakangas-Savolainen, 2024. "A parametric method to estimate environmental energy efficiency with non-radial adjustment: an application to China," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 342(3), pages 1379-1405, November.
    14. Bhat, Javed Ahmad & Haider, Salman & Kamaiah, Bandi, 2018. "Interstate energy efficiency of Indian paper industry: A slack-based non-parametric approach," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 284-298.
    15. 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.
    16. Kowalska-Pyzalska, Anna & Maciejowska, Katarzyna & Suszczyński, Karol & Sznajd-Weron, Katarzyna & Weron, Rafał, 2014. "Turning green: Agent-based modeling of the adoption of dynamic electricity tariffs," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 164-174.
    17. Adom, Philip Kofi, 2015. "Business cycle and economic-wide energy intensity: The implications for energy conservation policy in Algeria," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 334-350.
    18. Hang, Ye & Sun, Jiasen & Wang, Qunwei & Zhao, Zengyao & Wang, Yizhong, 2015. "Measuring energy inefficiency with undesirable outputs and technology heterogeneity in Chinese cities," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 46-52.
    19. van Megen, Bram & Bürer, Meinrad & Patel, Martin K., 2019. "Comparing electricity consumption trends: A multilevel index decomposition analysis of the Genevan and Swiss economy," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 1-25.
    20. 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.
    21. Virkki-Hatakka, Terhi & Luoranen, Mika & Ikävalko, Markku, 2013. "Differences in perception: How the experts look at energy efficiency (findings from a Finnish survey)," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 499-508.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:eee:enepol:v:146:y:2020:i:c:s0301421520305498. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    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.