Studying the room for improvement in energy intensity by data envelopment analysis under the meta-frontier framework

Governments typically employ an indicator for energy intensity as their target to achieve national energy policies. By using all European Union member states as a sample and dividing them into Baltic Sea region (BSR) and non-Baltic Sea region (NBSR) countries in order to compare regional economic and energy matters, this study finds that the indicator of room for improvement in energy intensity (RIEI) correlates with energy efficiency (EE) and the energy technology gap ratio (ETGR). The research results show that introducing advanced energy technology and taking an energy management approach are ways in which BSR states can reduce their RIEI. As our study only considers NBSR countries, we see that they pay attention on improvements in energy technology, but ignore improvements in energy efficiency when their GDP per capita increases. Finally, we note that the inversed-U-shaped relationship between RIEI and GDP per capita is a better economic development type.