A systematic review of energy and environmental efficiency studies

With the increase of environmental concerns and restrictions after 1986, especially in the context of issues related to global warming and climate change, environmental efficiency was placed as a principle on the government's policy agenda. Therefore, the aim of this research is to review the environmental efficiency literature through a systematic review. In this research, 80 articles have been reviewed in order to review the environmental efficiency literature between 2014 and 2023. Microsoft Excel and VOS viewer software were used in this research. After the review, the articles were analyzed based on three categories including research content, research field and research method, and it was found that in the research content, articles with topics about the importance of environmental efficiency contributed the most. In the field of research, most of the articles were related to the geographical section, and in the research method section, mathematical modeling accounted for most of the articles. The keyword of environmental efficiency was the most used keyword in the target area. Also, it was found that in 2022 the number of published articles increased significantly. Based on the analysis of the studied articles, this study developed a conceptual framework of environmental efficiency and outlined potential directions for future research centered on the concepts defined in the existing literature.