Investigation of CO2 emission reduction and improving energy use efficiency of button mushroom production using Data Envelopment Analysis

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is a linear programming based frontier estimation technique for measuring the relative efficiencies of a homogenous set of Decision Making Units. This approach has two models including constant returns to scale and variable returns to scale model. In this study energy use pattern and CO2 emission of button mushroom production in Isfahan province of Iran was studied and the degrees of technical and scale efficiency of producers were analyzed using DEA technique. Technical, pure technical, scale and cross efficiencies were calculated using CCR and BCC models for producers. The results revealed that, the total amount of CO2 emission was 23.84 and 32.86 kg CO2eq m−2 in efficient and inefficient farmers, respectively. Total optimum energy requirement was found to be 812.75 MJ m2; showing that 88.07 MJ m−2 of input energy could be saved if the producers follow the results recommended by this study. Optimization of energy use improved the energy use efficiency, specific energy and net energy by 13.3%, 9.38% and 10.06%, respectively.