Implementing energy efficiency for target setting in the sugar industry of Iran

Sugar plants are one of the most energy-consuming industries in Iran; thus, the implementation of measures to improve energy efficiency seems necessary for such industries. This paper investigated sugar plants' efficiency in different stages for implementation process of energy efficiency measures focusing on determining some relations for benchmarking and reaching efficient status. In doing so, the process of implementation of energy efficiency improvement measures is planned on the basis of experts' opinions. Also, for deriving the efficiency of each plant in each of the stages of implementation of measures and the aggregate efficiency of them a multi-stage data envelopment analysis model is formulated. The obtained results from average efficiency indicated that the under evaluation population in the first, second, third, and fifth stages have a good performance and in the fourth-stage managers could not perform successfully. Also, the results of determining some relations for benchmarking showed that to what extent each of the outputs of each stage of the implementation process of energy efficiency measures in the sugar plants should be changed in order to achieve efficient conditions. The distance between the current output and the desirable output indicates to what extent manager has been successful in operation, studies of the rate of change of each of the outputs to achieve the efficient conditions are of the utmost importance in developing suitable strategies.