Benchmarking Economical Efficiency of Renewable Energy Power Plants: A Data Envelopment Analysis Approach

2013

Water

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This article reports the outcome of a performance study of the water service provision industry in Italy. The study evaluates the efficiency of 21 "private or public-private" equity and 32 "public" equity water service operators and investigates controlling factors. In particular, the influence that the operator typology and service management nature -private vs. public -has on efficiency is assessed. The study employed a two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis methodology. In the first stage, the operational efficiency of water supply operators is calculated by implementing a conventional BCC DEA model, that uses both physical infrastructure and financial input and output variables to explore economies of scale. In the second stage, bootstrapped DEA and Tobit regression are performed to estimate the influence that a number of environmental factors have on water supplier efficiency. The results show that the integrated water provision industry in Italy is characterized by operational inefficiencies of service operators, and scale and agglomeration economies may have a not negligible effect on efficiency. In addition, the operator typology and its geographical location affect efficiency.

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Public-Private Partnerships a Source of Greater Efficiency in Water Supply? Results of a Non-Parametric Performance Analysis Relating to the Italian Industry

2013

Water

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“…There is a huge amount of papers that consider the measurement of economic efficiency in the energy industry. Particularly, some scholars performed extensive literature reviews considering papers that used DEA to deal with different efficiency measurement issues in the field of energy generation and management [8][9][10][11]. However, there are relatively few papers that provided efficiency measurements in the specific gas industry adopting DEA, and most of the efficiency studies focused on the distribution segment of the industry.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Nonparametric Economic Analysis of the US Natural Gas Transmission Infrastructure: Efficiency, Trade-Offs and Emerging Industry Configurations

2018

Energies

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This paper presents a study aimed at measuring the efficiency of the transmission segment of the US natural gas industry from an economic perspective. The gas transmission infrastructure is modeled as an economic production function and a multi-stage modeling approach based on the implementation of Data Envelopment Analysis is employed to obtain an efficiency measure in a two-dimension performance space, i.e., cost and revenue-efficiency. This approach allows taking into account conflicting business goals. The study also performs cluster analysis to uncover homogeneous efficiency profiles relative to the gas transmission systems to explore determinants of efficiency rates, and trade-off situations. A sample containing 80 US gas transmission systems is used in the analysis. Results indicate that the transmission segment of the US gas industry has considerable inefficiencies, while average cost and revenue-efficiency scores are 0.324 and 0.301, and only three transmission systems achieve high scores on both efficiency dimensions. Cluster analysis identified seven configurations. In three of them there are no trade-off situations between cost and revenue efficiencies. However, only in one of them gas transmission systems have high efficiencies. The remaining four configurations exhibit trade-off situations having different intensity. Such trade-offs can be determined by the gas transmission infrastructure size.

“…DEA has revealed to be a very useful method in the practice of benchmarking, as it provides insights as to the potential improvement capabilities of a unit, indicates sources of inefficiency, and also makes it possible to take into account the existence of preferences when efficiency rates are calculated (lo Storto, 2013;lo Storto & Ferruzzi, 2013).…”

Section: The Measurement Of Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Two-Step Method Useful For Support of Technical Benchmarking Practice in the Automotive Market

2014

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The aim of this paper is to present a two-step method useful for support of product benchmarking practice in the automotive industry by measuring a technical value of car model. This method assumes that a car is a bundle of objectively and subjectively measurable attributes (i.e. functional features) provided to users. The car’s technical value is thus a measure of the overall benefit it delivers to users, while the car’s technical efficiency measures a relative benefit the users gain when they utilize a particular car model charged by certain ownership and usage costs. Technical efficiency is calculated by implementing Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). As an example, the method is implemented to conduct a retrospective benchmarking study in the Italian domestic passenger car market in the years 1970s-1990s. Results show that cars differed remarkably due to their technical efficiency, but only 35 car models in the sample have been classified by DEA as 100 % efficient. Car models sold in the 1980s resulted not so competitive in terms of technical efficiency as models sold in the 1970s and 1990s. The results also revealed that the technical value increases with the purchasing cost, but it diminishes with the usage cost. As additional value to literature and practice, the method suggests insights about how: a) to compare cars in a multi-dimension features space; b) to analyze technological trends in the car industry; c) to study the car market structure and identify the emergence of market niches still unexploited by automotive manufacturers