Evaluating energy efficiency of public institutions in China

- A new method for assessing the energy efficiency of public institutions was developed.
- Energy efficiency of public institutions in four climatic regions in China was analyzed.
- Measures to improve energy efficiency were developed.

Public institutions play a prominent role in energy conservation efforts, not only by effectively promoting the application of new energy-saving technologies and products, but also by serving as an example to society. In this study, we established a system for evaluating energy management performance based on energy consumption of the People's Bank of China from 2011 to 2014. The decision-making unit was divided into four climatic regions, and the pure technical efficiencies of 336 branches of the People's Bank of China were obtained using data envelopment analysis, which somewhat overcomes the shortcomings of traditional methods for evaluating energy management performance. In addition, we used exploratory spatial analysis to reveal the spatial-temporal evolution, spatial patterns, and spatial agglomeration characteristics of energy consumption. The number of branches with optimal energy efficiency was the highest in the moderate climate region and lowest in cold regions. The performance of each branch was influenced by that of surrounding branches, and branches with high-high agglomeration mainly were located in the northwest and the northeast of China. Based on the evaluation, suggestions for improving the energy management performance of public institutions were provided.