Energy intensity improvement and energy productivity changes: an analysis of BRICS and G7 countries

This research defines the energy intensity target of the contemporaneous metafrontier and global metafrontier in order to assist decision-makers at identifying the efficient energy intensity target. We find that the sources of energy intensity improvement under the global metafrontier are due to three reasons: managerial inefficiency, technology gap inefficiency, and global technology gap inefficiency. In addition, the measurement of the energy intensity target also extends to that of energy productivity changes. The research applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) to empirically study Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) and the Group of Seven (G7) countries and demonstrates that the BRICS group exhibits a larger scope for energy intensity improvement than the G7 group, but that both groups should still pay greater attention to energy technology promotion to improve energy intensity. A win–win strategy for the two groups to achieve this is by fully realizing energy technology transfer from high-tech to low-tech countries.