اهداف صرفه جویی در انرژی کارآمد برای همکاری های اقتصادی آسیا و اقیانوس آرام

Energy-saving target ratios (ESTR) for 17 APEC economies during 1991–2000 are computed in a total-factor framework. All nominal variables are transformed into real variables by the purchasing power parity (PPP) at the 1995 price level. The data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach is used to find the energy-saving target (EST) for APEC economies without reducing their maximum potential gross domestic productions (GDPs) in each year. Energy, labor, and capital are the three inputs, while GDP is the single output. Our major findings are as follows: (1) China has the largest EST up to almost half of its current usage. (2) Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the United States have the highest energy efficiency. (3) The energy efficiency generally increases for APEC economies except for Canada and New Zealand. (4) Chile, Mexico, and Taiwan have significantly improved their energy efficiency in the last 5 years. (5) An inverted U-shape relation exists between per capita EST and per capita GDP. (6) ESTR has a positive relation with the value-added percentage of GDP of the industry sector and a negative relation with that of the service sector.

Energy saving has been a crucial issue for sustainable development. During the past 300 years, economic development all over the world has relied on depletable petro-fossil fuels. Therefore, before new and substitute fuels become available, energy saving is a must in order to make economic growth possible. Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies include the fastest economies in the world and have attracted the most foreign capital, technology, as well as managerial know-how during the past 20 years. Fast-developing economies and fast-growing energy consumption definitely add pressure to petro-fossil fuels’ depletion. However, many people worry that drastic savings in energy will hamper economic growth. Therefore, finding efficient ESTs for APEC economies without reducing the potential maximum economic growth has become a very important issue. Ever since the Kyoto Protocol became effective in February 2005, reducing the consumption of fossil fuels has been a focal point of environmental policy in many economies including developed and developing ones (de Nooij et al., 2003). The energy system plays a central role in the interrelated economic, social, and environmental aims of sustainable human development (WCED, 1987). Energy issues must be integrated with environmental management to achieve sustainable development, especially for fast-developing economies. Energy efficiency improvement is the key to sustainable energy management. For example, European Union estimates that realizing 10–20% of efficiency potential in the European use of electricity would save 10–20 billion ECU annually in terms of fossil fuels use. In Malaysia, it is expected that aggressive deployment of energy efficiency could save about US$1.38 billion by 2015 (Keong, 2005). The economic energy efficiency potentials of various industries range from 2% to 18% in the United States in 2010, 5% to 40% in China in 2010, and 2.2% to 28.5% in Thailand 2005 (WEC et al., 2000). Hu and Wang (2006) also indicate that China can improve its energy efficiency in various regions without reducing its potential economic growth. These studies also show that developing economies have more energy efficiency potentials than developed ones. The Joint Economic Committee of the Congress of the United States (1981) proposed a commonly used indicator of energy inefficiency—the energy intensity as a direct ratio of the energy input to GDP. However, there has been widespread criticism of using energy intensity for measuring energy efficiency (Patterson, 1996). The main problem with energy/GDP, as pointed out by Wilson et al. (1994), is that it does not measure the underlying technical energy efficiency, which can lead to misleading conclusions. For example, the energy intensity may decrease solely because energy is substituted for labor, rather than any underlying deterioration in the technical energy efficiency (Patterson, 1996). Energy is the prime source of value, because other factors of production such as labor and capital cannot do without energy (Ghali and El-Sakka, 2004). The use of the energy efficiency indicator in conjunction with labor and capital can provide useful insights into whether or not energy inputs act as complements or substitutes to other inputs (Patterson, 1996). Given the limited availability of economically viable alternative energy sources, reducing total domestic energy use without sacrificing economic growth is an important issue for economies all over the world (de Nooij et al., 2003). ESTs are hence important for all economies. In the same way, energy efficiency improvement should rely on total factor productivity improvement (Boyd and Pang, 2000). Therefore, a multiple input–output model should be applied for evaluating an EST with a total-factor model. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) finds the efficient outputs and inputs in a total-factor framework. This technique makes use of information available in considering factors simultaneously. Efficiency is defined by the difference in the ‘best practice’ production frontier, as measured by DEA. The ‘best practice’ in the frontier is the benchmark to calculate the projected and possible energy saving for those not on the frontier. By comparing the relative practice of various inputs and output in different economies, we can identify the main amount (target) of energy saving likely to be found. Thus, the performance of the economies that have the ‘best practices’ can serve as a benchmark to evaluate a particular economy's energy consumption. A similar approach to construct abatement ratios from the total-factor framework can be found in Hu (2006) and Hu and Wang (2006). Few studies apply DEA to compare productivity and efficiency by considering energy use across countries: Färe et al. (2004) used DEA to construct an environmental performance index focusing on pollution. In their study, energy is just one part of the inputs that are taken into account. Since their major objective is to find a method considering undesirable outputs, they used output-oriented DEA models. Edvardsen and Førsund (2003) and Jamasb and Pollitt (2003) analyzed the benchmarking of the electricity industry in Europe and Northern Europe at the plant level. A special feature of this across economies study herein is that the data (for 1990s) are based on a sample of APEC economies at the economy level and the focus is on the use of energy. The causes of rapid Asian economic growth and its sustainability have generated considerable debates since the early 1990s (e.g., World Bank, 1993; Krugman, 1994; Kim and Lau, 1994 and Kim and Lau, 1995; Young, 1994 and Young, 1995; Chen, 1997; Drysdale and Huang, 1997; Krüger et al., 2000; Chang and Luh, 2000). Many economies have adopted energy efficiency policies and measures, but systematic information is only available for OECD economies. There is hence a significant need to improve energy efficiency policy collaboration among APEC economies and disseminate successful practices (APERC, 2002). As such, the energy efficiency among APEC economies is worth further studying. Focusing on the international association as a partnership in sharing technology and resources, we apply the DEA approach using multiple inputs containing capital, labor, and energy consumption in order to analyze the total-factor energy efficiency of APEC economies. This analysis computes the possible energy savings without reducing the maximum potential economic outputs for APEC economies. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 explains how to identify the ‘best practice’ and construct the total-factor energy efficiency indicator based on DEA. Comparing with the frontier, the total adjustments of energy input can be obtained, and they calculate the energy-saving amount and ratio by comparing with the actual energy input in an individual economy. Section 3 includes summary statistics of the empirical data. Section 4 presents and discusses the empirical results. Finally, Section 5 concludes this paper.

In summary, this paper employs a total-factor framework to analyze the energy efficiency of APEC economies. The ESTs can be obtained by comparing the ideal input amount based on the ‘best practice’ of the production function and actual energy input. ESTR as a total-factor energy-saving efficiency indicator is constructed based on the theory of the frontier theory through DEA, which considers multiple input/output simultaneously. ESTR advises energy efficiency and EST without scarifying real economic output for every economy. When energy is the single input to produce GDP output, there might be an over-estimation or under-estimation of efficiency. The EST and ESTR constructed in this paper are better ways to compute the energy efficiency and also the energy-saving level. In terms of energy efficiency, APEC members have improved their energy efficiency. In particular, APEC's developed members have performed better than their developing counterparts. However, Canada appears to be inefficient behind other developed economies in terms of ESTR. Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the United States are the best performers among APEC economies with their zero ESTR. Chile, Mexico, and Taiwan caught up in the later 1990s. In contrast, China has the largest ESTR with the highest percentage of total ESTR among APEC economies. It can save half of its current energy consumption while keeping the same output level. Furthermore, the energy efficiencies of the South-East Asian economies are lower than average. In contrast, the Central and South American economies have lower ESTRs. An inverted U-shape relation is found between the ratio of per capita EST and per capita real income among APEC economies. The developed economies except for Canada own a better per capita income, and so the EST is a minimum concern. The same thing does not happen to developing economies since these economies consume more energy, but at a lower efficiency. According to these findings, the condition of energy efficiency and EST in the South-East Asian economies should be paid more attention. Developing economies can both pursue their urgent requirements for increased energy services and reduce their environmentally damaging emissions. They cannot exploit resources with ‘no regrets’ on the one hand, while wanting to reduce energy inputs and emissions in order to achieve a given outcome on the other hand. Sharing and transferring the knowledge, technology, and know-how from an efficient economy to an inefficient economy is costly in reality. However, those APEC economies with higher energy efficiency should help the less-efficient economies to improve their energy efficiency based on their kindness, regional cooperation, and international responsibility. Based the data of 2000, the target energy saving of all APEC economies is 418.15 Mtoe, taking 13.22% of their total energy consumption. The energy-saving amount will help APEC economies to reduce pollution emission and meet the principles of Kyoto Protocol. Developing and newly industrializing economies need not input more resources to maintain their economic growth, but can also save more energy for sustainable development. Energy efficiency can be promoted without reducing maximum potential GDPs by importing new technology, improving processes, and changing the industrial structure to reduce wasteful energy use. For example, energy efficiency can be improved by shifting from energy-intensive industries (such as mining, basic metals, chemicals, and petrochemicals) to less energy-intensive manufacturing and/or service industries, even without more effective energy end-use technologies being implemented. Even for the same sector, energy efficiency levels can be different across economies. Older power plants in many developing countries consume from 18% to 44% more fuels per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced than those in industrialized countries (Balce et al., 2001; Pearson and Fouquet, 1996). It is an interesting topic for future research to study how industry-level energy efficiency affects macro-level energy efficiency. However, this type of work needs detailed data for several industries across many economies. Due to data limitation, we can only find the retail prices of oil in 1997 for 17 economies from APERC (2000). However, there is neither a significant relation found between ESTR and the retail price of oil nor one between per capita EST and the retail price of oil. This may be because energy prices alone cannot determine the total energy efficiency and energy saving of an economy. The structure of energy mixes, energy efficiency, taxation, and relative prices for all energy resources includes the factors influencing energy use and the energy saving of an economy. Industrial structure, energy policies, energy consumption type, and treatments from an economic base can be further included. The efficiency frontier shift is another interesting topic to study, which can be conducted by DEA-Malmquist models. As long as the balance between economic growth and energy consumption is reached, sustainable development for APEC economies can be achieved.