Study on Energy Use Pattern, Optimization of Energy Consumption and CO2 Emission For Greenhouse Tomato Production

Abstract

This study applied a non-parametric method to analyze the efficiency of farmers, discriminate efficient farmers from inefficient ones and to
identify wasteful uses of energy in order to optimize the energy inputs for tomato greenhouse production in Esfahan province of Iran. DEA
creates a best practice production frontier based on the growers that produce their level of tomato yield with the least amount of input energy.
The data used in this study was obtained through a face to- face questionnaire method in the surveyed region – Esfahan province of Iran. The
results indicated that total energy inputs were 116768.4 MJha-1. About 40% of this was generated by diesel fuel and 30% from total fertilizer.
Two basic DEA models (CCR and BCC) were used to measure the TEs of the greenhouses based on seven energy inputs and one output. The
CCR and BCC models indicated 3 and 8 greenhouses were efficient, respectively. The average values of TE, PTE and SE of greenhouses were
found to be 0.79, 0.89 and 0.88, respectively. Moreover, energy saving target ratio for tomato production was calculated as 12.16%, indicating
that by following the recommendations resulted from this study, about 14194MJ ha-1 of total input energy could be saved while holding the
constant level of tomato yield. The result of greenhouse gas emission analysis showed that optimization of energy decreases the CO2 emission
by 0.54 ton ha-1. The diesel fuel input has the highest impact on environmental pollution.