Dynamic Energy Efficiency, Energy Decoupling Rate, and Decarbonization: Evidence from ASEAN+6

Chiang-Ping Chen,Wei-Che Tsai,Ming-Chung Chang

doi:10.1177/21582440211047245

Chiang-Ping Chen, Wei-Che Tsai + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211047245

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Abstract

Improving energy efficiency is widely identified as shifting energy usage to an optimal status in order to ultimately strengthen a country’s competitiveness and development, and indeed this is of particular relevance to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus Six’ (ASEAN+6). The traditional data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach has extensively been employed for estimating energy efficiency, but it does not properly utilize the weight in the DEA model to probe the behavior change of a decision making unit (DMU). This research therefore applies a progressive time-weighted dynamic efficiency model (PTDEM) to estimate the energy efficiency of ASEAN+6 and discusses the issues concerning their energy decoupling rates and decarbonization. The proposed model herein fully considers a DMU’s behavior change by estimating its energy efficiency. Empirical results reveal that: (i) improvements in energy efficiency within ASEAN are greater than in the other six countries; (ii) members of ASEAN still have more room for improvement than the other six countries with regard to achieving the standard ratio of the energy decoupling rate; and (iii) there is no evidence of convergence to decarbonization within ASEAN+6.

Highlights

Energy is an indispensable resource, and a major driving force behind national development, but an undesirable side effect of fossil fuel energy usage is the production of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Odugbesan and Rjoub (2020) mentioned that developing an energy conservation policy will enhance the potential growth of their economy
The finding of a significant gap between the energy decoupling rate and the target energy decoupling rate is more obvious in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members than in the other six countries, which results in the achievement standard ratios of the energy decoupling rate for ASEAN members being lower than those of the other six countries
The individual results on the energy decoupling rate, the target energy decoupling rate, and the achievement standard ratio of the energy decoupling rate for the 14 countries of ASEAN+6 are reported in Table 5, which shows that Brunei Darussalam and Singapore have slightly higher energy decoupling rates than those of the other countries in ASEAN

Summary

Introduction

Energy is an indispensable resource, and a major driving force behind national development, but an undesirable side effect of fossil fuel energy usage is the production of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Odugbesan and Rjoub (2020) mentioned that developing an energy conservation policy will enhance the potential growth of their economy. Energy is an indispensable resource, and a major driving force behind national development, but an undesirable side effect of fossil fuel energy usage is the production of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Odugbesan and Rjoub (2020) mentioned that developing an energy conservation policy will enhance the potential growth of their economy. Over the past two decades, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have enjoyed excellent economic efficiency performance, but resulted in increased GHG emissions in which most increased emissions are attributable to fossil-fuel combustion (World Resources Institute, 2011). According to a 2019 IEA report, with a forecasted average annual growth rate of 2.3% between 2018 and 2040, GHG emissions in ASEAN is expected to grow seven times as fast as the global annual average over the same period. While the region’s share of global emissions is relatively small (4.3% in 2018), it looks to increase by more than half to 6.5% by 2040 (International Energy Agency, 2019)

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