The effect of heating technologies on CO2 and energy efficiency of Dutch greenhouse firms

This paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis to compute measures of the efficiency (relative to a frontier) in terms of the use of all inputs as well as for single inputs like CO2 and energy for a sample of greenhouse firms in the Netherlands over the period 1991-1995. These efficiency measures are generated for different firms specialised in production of vegetables, flowers, and potplants and with different heating technologies. The empirical results indicate that firms use energy quite efficiently and are less efficient in terms Of CO2 emissions. Firms using conventional heating are overall less efficiently using energy and CO2 than firms using more advanced heating technologies. Most differences in efficiency between firm types and firms using different heating technologies are statistically significant. Scale adjustments can provide an important contribution to further efficiency improvements. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.