Research On The Environmental Performance Evaluation Of Thermoelectric Enterprises Of Anhui Province

With the rapid development of the Chinese economy, high energy consumption led to increasingly serious resource, energy and environmental problems which has seriously restricted the sustainable economic and social development in China. As the main coal consumption industries in our country, the thermoelectric industry should bear greater responsibility in the process of energy reform and environmental governance. Hence, evaluate and research the environmental performance of the thermoelectric enterprises with appropriate methods which can promote the sustainable development of the thermoelectric enterprises has an important significance. Based on the deep analysis of the present situation and development trend of the Data envelopment analysis(DEA) method and the Life Cycle Assessment(LCA) method, this research proposed a new DEA + LCA combined method to provided an new application method for the environmental performance evaluation and proved the feasibility of this method with an empirical analysis on the thermoelectric enterprises of Anhui province in China.Specifically, based on the data of the 50 thermoelectric enterprises of Anhui province, according to the characteristics of the thermoelectric industry, the author firstly analysed and simplified the production process of the thermoelectric enterprises, and construct suitable staged evaluation index system for environmental performance of the thermoelectric enterprises in Anhui province. Then used the Super-SBM model with undesirable output to evaluate the environmental efficiencies of the boiler system and the turbine-dynamo system, while used the Super-SBM model without undesirable output calculate the technical efficiency of the emission treatment system. The results showed that the environmental efficiency of the boiler system is much greater than the environmental efficiency of the turbine-dynamo system and the technical efficiency of the emission treatment system for most of the thermoelectric enterprises in Anhui province in 2010. Further, the author analysed the input redundancy, the output deficiency and the pollution excess of each subsystem.Secondly, the life cycle inventory(LCI) analysis of the resources and energy consumption and pollution emission of the thermoelectric enterprises was used to the process of the Life Cycle Impact Assessment(LCIA). Then the weight of each subsystem measured by the LCIA evaluation results was combined with the weight calculated by the variable coefficient method to determine the final weight of each subsystem. Based on the DEA efficiency and the weight of each subsystem, the comprehensive environmental performance was finally evaluated. The results showed that the overall level of the comprehensive environmental performance of the 50 thermoelectric enterprises of Anhui province was low.Finally, based on the results of the environmental impact assessment by LCIA, the author further quantificationally analysed the 8 environmental impacts including fossil energy consumption, freshwater resource depletion, global warming, environment acidification, water eutrophication, human body toxicity, solid waste, smoke and dust. The results showed that the environmental impact from the boiler system was far above the environmental impacts from the turbine-dynamo system and the emission treatment system. Their total potential impact value was 6.28 E-07 / ten thousand yuan output value,-4.94 E-10 /ten thousand yuan output value,-5.73 E-09 / ten thousand yuan output value respectively. The minus meaned to a good impression Eventually, from the perspective of the environmental management, the author put forward some valuable opinions and suggestions for the thermoelectric enterprises.The innovation of this paper mainly included three aspects. First, the data of the case study was from microcosmic thermoelectric enterprises of Anhui province in China which made results a practical significance. Second, based on the production process analysis, the suitable staged evaluation index system for environmental performance of the thermoelectric enterprises in Anhui province was proposed. The last but not the least, about research method, was the most important innovation and greatest contribution in this paper. The author try a new way of DEA+LCA combined method to provide a new evaluation method for environmental performance, especially for the thermoelectric industry.