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Environmental Performance and Benchmarking Information for Coal-Fired Power Plants in China: A DEA Approach

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Abstract

The rapid economic development in China has intensified the country’s many problems, such as environmental pollution. Coal-fired power plants are a major source of environmental pollution. In order to effectively reduce environmental pollution, it is particularly important that China’s coal-fired power plants reach the best performance standards. In this paper, data envelopment analysis is used to evaluate the environmental efficiency of 27 coal-fired power plants in China. First, we develop a range adjusted measurement (RAM) efficiency measure based on farthest target which considers undesirable output to measure the environmental efficiency. Then, based on the fact that benchmarking information can offer a pivotal pathway for inefficient DMUs to achieve efficiency, another RAM environmental efficiency measure, based on closest target, is built to analyze the efficiency and give the closest benchmarking information. The empirical study shows that closest targets are more easily attainable and provide the most relevant solution to remove inefficiency.

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Acknowledgments

The research is supported by National Natural Science Funds of China (Nos. 71222106 and 71110107024), Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China (No. 20133402110028), Foundation for the Author of National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation of P. R. China (No. 201279) and The Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. WK2040160008) and Top-Notch Young Talents Program of China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Service and Management, Anhui Business Vocational College, Hefei, 231131, Anhui, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaohong Liu

  2. School of Management, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, Anhui, People’s Republic of China

    Qingyuan Zhu, Junfei Chu, Xiang Ji & Xingchen Li

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  1. Xiaohong Liu
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  2. Qingyuan Zhu
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  4. Xiang Ji
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Correspondence to Qingyuan Zhu.

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Liu, X., Zhu, Q., Chu, J. et al. Environmental Performance and Benchmarking Information for Coal-Fired Power Plants in China: A DEA Approach. Comput Econ 54, 1287–1302 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10614-015-9560-1

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