An Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Energy Efficiency for Production Systems

Abstract

Measuring energy has been widely considered as one of the most cost-effective ways to improve energy efficiency leading to the energy sustainability by decreasing impact on the environment. The literature on energy efficiency and sustainability assessment methods, applied on the industrial processes is still under development. With regard to the production systems, activities mainly address separate improvement measures for energy savings, but there is no methodology for assessing the integrated effects from a combined analysis of energy, pollutions, and benefits so far. The aim of the paper is to provide a new look at an environmental sustainability assessment of energy-efficiency in production systems combining LCA-based methods energy efficiency optimization technique, and Data Envelopment Analysis. The results show mitigation of energy impact on the environmental bringing net benefits in nine production systems. It might contribute how the application of the assessment method can contribute towards developing the environmental sustainability performance measure within them.