The Productive Efficiency Assessment of Wind Power Generation in the United States

Abstract

Wind power is the largest renewable energy source which produces a negligible amount of GHG emissions, have gained enormous attention, especially in the electricity generation sector over the past decade in the United States. In this study, a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is developed to quantitatively evaluate the relative efficiencies of the 34 state’s wind power productivity for the electricity generation. An output-oriented CCR (Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes (1978)) and BCC (Banker, Charnes, and Cooper (1984)) models are applied to pre-determined two input and three output variables. The sensitivity analysis is conducted to test the robustness of the DEA models. The DEA results indicate that more than two-thirds of the states operate wind power efficiently even though there are only five states that reach the maximum efficiency score. Findings of this study shed some light on the current efficiency assessments of the states and the future of wind energy for both energy practitioners and policy makers.