A data envelopment analysis approach to measuring socio-economic efficiency due to renewable energy sources in Brazilian regions

The challenge of reducing CO[Formula: see text] emissions imposes on the countries the inclusion of renewable energies in their electricity matrix. Brazil needs to improve the participation of Wind, Solar, and Biomass in its system once its electricity generation is highly concentrated on hydro sources. Further, renewable, Electricity generation power plants are frequently associated with good impacts on carbon emission mitigation and job generation. In this paper, we sought to answer if there is a difference in the efficiency of electricity generation technologies’ capacity to induce regional socio-economic and environmental development. We used a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to measure the relative efficiency scores of Brazilian mesoregions that hold power plants regarding environmental and socio-economic dimensions. Results show that the mesoregions which contain nuclear, wind, and photovoltaic power plants (or a combination of these technologies) perform better than mesoregions that comprise biomass, gas, and coal thermal facilities. In addition, the results show that renewable energy facilities perform better than non-renewable facilities in direct job generation and GDP aggregation. This study contributes to the existing literature from a methodological perspective as we compare different renewable energy technologies in three dimensions (social, economic, and environmental) at a regional level.