Energy efficiency of five municipalities in Taiwan Peng, Kai-Chiung 1and Yang, Shih-Ju2 1Assistant Professor, Department of International Business, Ching-Yun University, Email: shazam@cyu.edu.tw 2 Assistant Professor, Department of International Business, Ching-Yun University, Email: shihju@cyu.edu.tw The rapid advancements have made the globe encounter adverse problems such as greenhouse effect, energy exhaustion, rapid environmental deterioration, and resource shortage. These problems pose great challenges to human beings in pursuing the development of environment, energy, and sustainable survival; thus, sustainable operations for the environment and conservation consciousness have come to be valued (European commission, 2005; Halme, 2004). Urban energy use is currently an essential issue widely investigated overseas. According to the aforementioned research background and motive, stratified sampling is employed in this research and field questionnaire is conducted based on the proportion of the population of each city and county to their household numbers in order to obtain the data including the income, number of family members, the size of the house, and the power consumption habit. Concretely speaking, the objectives in this research are as follow: 1. To apply DEA to the comparison of household power consumption efficiency in the five municipalities; 2. To compile domestic and overseas power consumption indicators in which congruous efficiency indicator is suggested through the correlation analysis by means of DEA. Preface According to values of the per income electricity consumption, the per capita electricity consumption, and the per area electricity consumption compiled in Table 2, it can be found that when the value is bigger in one area, the performance is worse; however, when the value is smaller, the performance in the area is better. Table 2 five city index A radar chart is drawn in this paper to display the relative performance of the six indicators, namely the DEA efficiency, the per income electricity consumption, the per person-hour electricity consumption, the per capita electricity consumption, and per area electricity consumption, and the unevenness of the per capita electricity consumption. The radar chart is also known as spider chart or star chart because of its appearance. Different axes are marked in the outer circle of the radar chart. To draw the radar chart, every data point has to stretch from the chart center along different axes. The closer the data approaches the border, the better the performance of this data genre will be. (Figure 1) Figure 1 five city index radar chart Result The standard deviations in the five areas distribute from 0.1608 to 0.1943 in which the values in Tainan City and Taipei City are lower while those in Kaohsiung City and New Taipei City are higher. (Table 1) The questionnaires suggest that in Tainan City and Taipei City, there is no huge difference in household power consumption; however, in Kaohsiung City and New Taipei City, there is a significant difference in household power consumption, indicating that the daily habits and the way to use electric appliances in every household apparently differ. Table 1 Input, output item and DEA efficiency Item Index Code Taipei City New Taipei City Taichung City Tainan City Kaohsiung City Input Household KWh (KWh/month) 386.73 (160.50) <0.4150> 382.31 (146.32) <0.3827> 371.35 (181.09) <0.4877> 377.21 (178.52) <0.4733> 417.71 (196.11) <0.4695> Output Air-conditioning equipment (hours/month) 2265.84 (2067.31) <0.9124> 2289.50 (2770.02) <1.2099> 1927.19 (1959.82) <1.0169> 1486.79 (899.72) <0.6051> 1960.79 (1558.83) <0.7950> Refrigeration equipment 832.70 (262.76) <0.3155> 767.86 (259.05) <0.3374> 766.45 (177.84) <0.2320> 900.00 (448.09) <0.4979> 964.18 (447.33) <0.4639> Cooking equipment 1054.55 (841.87) <0.7983> 1301.57 (1437.03) <1.1041> 1184.67 (1284.74) <1.0845> 1134.55 (742.14) <0.6541> 1471.30 (1438.95) <0.9780> Washing equipment 395.31 (1222.76) <3.0932> 284.19 (1122.25) <3.9490> 338.54 (1125.03) <3.3232> 574.23 (1413.30) <2.4612> 359.38 (824.16) <2.2933> Video equipment 1385.05 (1764.22) <1.2738> 1461.93 (1956.58) <1.3384> 1253.84 (1710.93) <1.3646> 938.46 (1030.65) <1.0982> 1395.48 (1364.98) <0.9781> Telecommunications equipment 200.25 (300.26) <0.6669> 233.37 (329.70) <0.7078> 317.76 (406.32) <0.7821> 586.88 (392.89) <1.4937> 248.40 (374.24) <0.6637> Leisure equipment 57.34 (212.26) <3.7016> 46.48 (186.21) <4.0060> 88.92 (280.65) <3.1561> 53.96 (250.96) <4.6509> 46.18 (169.18) <3.6635> Lighting equipment 15130.09 (15396.76) <1.0176> 13422.47 (11535.12) <0.8594> 10293.75 (8917.33) <0.8663> 11887.73 (10136.42) <0.8527> 18607.85 (22022.70) <1.1835> DEA efficiency Number 115 168 93 72 122 Standard Deviation 0.1617 0.1943 0.1707 0.1608 0.1798 Minimum 0.0838 0.0562 0.0801 0.1301 0.0718 Maximum 1 Average 0.3110 0.3221 0.3105 0.2966 0.3386 Conclusions Stratified random sampling is employed with 1,000 households comprising the total number of observations in this questionnaire which include questions about basic data, residential properties, family properties, and household electrical appliance use. The research demonstrates that although in Taichung City and Tainan City, the inputs are the smallest, the outputs are relatively smaller as well. The questionnaires suggest that in Tainan City and Taipei City, there is no huge difference in household power consumption; however, in Kaohsiung City and New Taipei City, there is a significant difference in household power consumption, indicating that the daily habits and the way to use electric appliances in every household apparently differ.