Comparative Risk Assessment of energy supply technologies: a Data Envelopment Analysis approach

The diverse characteristics of eight different energy technologies are summ arized in the form of relative efficiencies using Data Envelopment Analysis . Data from a previously published study was employed for the purpose. The analysis showed that, given the data and variables considered in the analys is, solar photovoltaic and nuclear are the relatively best efficient techno logies, followed by natural gas and oil. The main problem of several renewa ble technologies appears to be the large land area that they require. (C) 2 001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.