Measuring "Energy Use Efficiency"of Container Terminals

When planning energy use reduction policies, one of the crucial elements that might provide a solid basis for the decision makers is an energy efficiency measurement. In fact, decision makers are reluctant to act if there is no strong and accurate data and results to support the policy position they may take. The purpose of this study is to propose an alternative method to measure energy use efficiency (Energy Efficiency) in the port industry, and more precisely, in the container terminals sector. The approach is based on the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) introduced by Farrell in 1957. The objective is to reduce the amount of energy inputs, at first step, the input variables are converted into their energy equivalents, then the energy efficiency is measured as an overall indicator using a constant return to scale model, and decomposed into technical and scale efficiencies in order to diagnose the origin of inefficiency in energy use for each unit in the selected sample. This allows us to provide more accurate results, and gives a more solid basis to decision makers in order to establish their policies, at the final step, a DEA Super Efficiency analysis is performed to achieve a full ranking in terms of energy efficiency for the units under study.