Jayanath Ananda,

Explaining the environmental efficiency of drinking water and wastewater utilities,

Sustainable Production and Consumption,
Volume 17,
2019,
Pages 188-195,
ISSN 2352-5509,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2018.10.002.
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352550918302033)
Abstract: Demand for drinking water and wastewater services has increased
drastically due to increased urbanization and population growth worldwide. The
provision of these services entails several negative externalities including
greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Conventional economic performance evaluation
methods often ignore the negative externalities of production. Using a
nonparametric approach, this paper analyzes the environmental efficiency of
drinking water utilities, which incorporates GHGs into the evaluation as an
undesirable output. A model based on the directional distance function was applied
to drinking water and wastewater utilities in Australia. Findings indicate that the
source of raw water, the level of wastewater treatment and production density have
a statistically significant influence on the environmental efficiency of drinking
water and wastewater utilities.
Keywords: Data envelopment analysis; Greenhouse gas emissions; Efficiency;
Truncated regression; Distance functions; Energy intensity