The relationship between enterprise efficiency in resource use and energy efficiency practices adoption

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between enterprise efficiency in resource use and the adoption of energy efficiency practices recommended by the US Department of Energy (DOE) through the Industrial Assessment Center (IAC). Using non-parametric techniques such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) and parametric techniques like Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) and Corrected Ordinary Least Square (COLS) to measure the efficiency. The Regression Quantile (RQ) is carried out to test the hypothesis that the most efficient companies have adopted a higher level of practice. The main conclusion is that when the enterprise operates at increasing Returns-to-Scale (RTS) the impact of efficiency on adoption increases positively, inversely when the enterprise operates at decreasing (RTS) the impact of efficiency on adoption increases negatively.