Energy use efficiency in US manufacturing: A nonparametric analysis

This study approaches the measurement of energy use efficiency in the U.S. manufacturing sector from a production theoretic perspective. The method of Data Envelopment Analysis is utilized to analyze the energy efficiency for the aggregate manufacturing sector as well as for the six highest energy consuming 2-digit sectors for the period 1970-2001, and several alternative models are proposed. The new measures of energy, efficiency suggested in this study do provide some additional insights and could be helpful if used alongside the traditional measure of energy efficiency based on energy intensity. (C) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.