Maria Molinos

• Professor (Assistant) at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

Benchmarking the sustainability of water utilities (WUs) in the provision of water and sanitation services is essential for addressing global sustainability goals. This study proposes a water utility sustainability index (WUSI), which was estimated for a sample of 29 WUs in Chile. To evaluate the impact of weighting methodologies on sustainability...

Several factors are contributing to the increased adoption of desalination. Population growth has significantly impacted areas experiencing water stress, while drought conditions, partly influenced by climate change, are simultaneously affecting many regions that previously considered their traditional water supplies to be sufficient. Meanwhile, th...

Water uses may be threatened by hydrochemical shifts that are triggered by droughts. Reduced rainfall, streamflow, and temperature fluctuations may induce distinct changes in salinity, suspended solids, turbidity, dissolved oxygen, organic matter, nutrient cycling, pH, stratification, and hydraulic residence times. The extent of these variations is...

One of the expected impacts of climate change is the alteration of precipitation and temperatures, modifying hydrological regimes and water availability. Faced with these changes, it is essential to adopt measures to guarantee the quantity, quality and continuity of drinking water supply to the population. This chapter proposes an instrument that c...

Within the context of the circular economy, improving the eco-efficiency (EE) in the management of municipal solid waste (MSW) is of paramount importance. For informed decision-making, understanding the dynamics of EE, i.e., eco-productivity change (EPC) and its drivers—efficiency change, technical change and scale change—have revealed as essential...

Water scarcity is one of the main challenges society faces. Hence, alternative water sources, such as greywater, rainwater, or treated wastewater, are becoming relevant. The main objective of the present investigation was to assess the preferences for greywater reuse under two drinking water availability scenarios and its impact on the economic fea...

Climate change is causing widespread extreme weather events around the world, affecting food and water security. One example is Chile, which is facing the longest drought in its history. To cope with this situation, adaptation measures such as option contracts have been explored. This type of contract allows the temporary transfer of water from one...

One of the main challenges that water companies face is to reduce carbon footprint in their transition to carbon neutrality. Past research assessing carbon performance of water companies has mostly ignored heterogeneity among the water companies evaluated. To overcome this limitation, this study employed a parametric metafrontier approach to assess...

Water utilities provide water and sanitation services in monopolistic conditions. Hence, assessing their performance through benchmarking is crucial for proper regulation. This research addresses the limitations of self-evaluation Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) models commonly used for benchmarking water utilities’ efficiency. Given that these mod...

Enhancing the eco-efficiency of municipal solid waste (MSW) services is pivotal for the shift toward a circular economy. Although the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method is widely used, it is susceptible to overfitting, potentially distorting eco-efficiency assessments. This study applies the efficiency analysis tree (EAT) method, which synergiz...

Moving toward a circular economy requires improvement of the economic and environmental performance of municipalities in their provision of municipal solid waste (MSW) services. Understanding performance changes over years is fundamental to support decision-making. This study employs the Luenberger-Hicks-Moorsteen productivity indicator to evaluate...

Primera parte de un documento que sintetiza la investigación y el trabajo de CEDEUS sobre aguas grises

Segunda parte de un documento que sintetiza la investigación y el trabajo de CEDEUS sobre aguas grises

Within the global climate change framework, enhancing energy efficiency presents a significant challenge for water utilities. Drinking water treatment is energy-intensive, involving several physicochemical processes to remove multiple pollutants from raw water. This study employs artificial neural networks (ANNs) and decision tree methods to gain a...

Water pricing is an economic instrument traditionally used to reduce water demand. However, its effective implementation requires knowledge of the extent to which users reduce water consumption with increasing water prices. The price elasticity of water demand has been estimated using econometric regression, which relies on cross-sectional and time...

Assessing the eco‐efficiency of municipalities regarding the provision of solid waste services is a useful tool for improving its sustainability. However, robust, and reliable methods are needed to benchmark the performance of municipalities. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) methods typically used to assess the eco‐efficiency of municipal solid wast...

In the context of climate change and increasing water scarcity, adopting water demand-side management (DSM)policies has become necessary. This study advocates for utilizing agent-based modelling (ABM) as a robustsimulation tool to assess the impact of nonprice (nudges) and price (changes in increasing block tariff) measureson urban water use. Overc...

Water treatment processes are known to consume substantial amounts of energy, making it crucial to understand their efficiency, drivers, and potential energy savings. In this study, we apply Efficiency Analysis Tree (EAT), which combines machine learning and linear programming techniques to assess the energy performance of 146 Chilean drinking wate...

In the face of climate change, it becomes crucial to motivate action and policies within water companies towards achieving carbon neutrality. Estimating the economic consequences of inaction can be a compelling catalyst for change. In this study, the carbon inefficiency and overuse of energy among a selection of English and Welsh water companies we...

The measurement of performance within the water industry holds significant importance for policymakers, as it can help guide decision-making for future development and management initiatives. In this study, we apply data envelopment analysis (DEA) cross-efficiency techniques to evaluate the productivity change of the Chilean water industry during t...

The imperative to make energy and resource consumption more sustainable is prompting a critical reconsideration of all human endeavors. Within urban water management, the drive to enhance sustainability is grounded in the recognition that water services consume a substantial amount of energy and that wastewater contains valuable resources, includin...

El crecimiento de la población urbana, junto con el cambio climático, está estresando las fuentes convencionales de agua dulce. Gran parte del agua que se consume domiciliariamente, tras su tratamiento en plantas de aguas residuales, se desecha sin darle otros usos. Nuevas estrategias de gestión de las aguas residuales, como su reúso, pueden genera...

Water companies provide essential services to society, such as drinking water and sanitation. Improving the management of these companies is fundamental for evaluating their performance. This study employs cross-efficiency data envelopment analysis techniques to assess a sample of water companies during the years 2010–2018. The assessment focuses o...

Enhancing the economic and environmental efficiency of municipal solid waste (MSW) management is crucial for transitioning to a circular economy and achieving cost-efficient and sustainable waste practices. In this study, we introduce an innovative approach to examine the influence of MSW recycling on waste performance over multiple years. We emplo...

Achieving sustainability and resilience depends on the conciliation of environmental, social, and economic issues integrated into a long-term perspective to ensure communities flourish. Many nations are transitioning toward both objectives, while at the same time addressing structural concerns that have not allowed them to look after the environmen...

The transition to a neutral carbon and sustainable urban water cycle requires improving eco-efficiency in wastewater treatment processes. To support decision-making based on eco-efficiency evaluations, reliable estimations are fundamental. In this study, the eco-efficiency of a sample of 109 WWTPs was evaluated using efficiency analysis tree method...

Evaluating the eco-efficiency of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is crucial for enhancing environmental and economic performance in the water utility sector. Previous studies in this area estimated WWTP eco-efficiency through self-evaluation, which might have led to overestimation and biased policy recommendations. To address these issues, this...

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are energy intensive facilities. Controlling energy use in WWTPs could bring substantial benefits to people and environment. Understanding how energy efficient the wastewater treatment process is and what drives efficiency would allow treating wastewater in a more sustainable way. In this study, we employed the e...

Benchmarking the dynamic performance of water companies is a powerful tool to develop sound policies. However, it requires the use of reliable and robust methods and quality of data. In this study, the stochastic nonparametric envelopment of data (StoNED) method was employed to assess productivity change and eco-productivity change of a sample of C...

The implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) in Chile, a middle-income country, has only been partially measured, mainly due to the lack of the data required to quantify all indicators related to this goal. Quantifying the progress made in achieving SDG 6 is particularly relevant in countries such as Chile, which is currently facing...

Relevant challenges associated with the urban water cycle must be overcome to meet the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and improve resilience. Unlike previous studies that focused only on the provision of drinking water, we propose a framework that extends the use of the theory of nudges to all stages of the overall urban water...

The regulation of water companies (WCs) is essential to protect the interests of citizens, as companies are natural monopolies. Consequently, several methodological approaches are applied by water regulators to benchmark the performance of WCs, with data envelopment analysis (DEA) being one of the most widely applied. However, traditional DEA model...

Improving the management of municipal solid waste (MSW) is fundamental to promote circular economy and sustainability. Unsorted waste involves negative environmental impacts which often are ignored in economic feasibility studies due to its difficult valuation. In this study the shadow price of unsorted waste using the directional distance function...

Eco-efficiency assessment of municipal solid waste (MSW) suppliers is a useful tool in the transition to a circular economy. Furthermore, it provides evidence of the economic and environmental performance of municipalities that can be used for decision-making and/or elaboration of regulatory policies. In this study, eco-efficiency scores were compu...

The path to a sustainable management of the urban water cycle requires the assessment of both operational and quality-adjusted efficiency in a unified manner. This can be done by the use of non-radial Data Envelopment Analysis models. This study used Range Adjusted Measure models to evaluate the operational, quality-adjusted, and operational & qual...

Drinking water treatment systems (DWTSs) are energy intensive facilities, and are an example of the water-energy nexus. Benchmarking energy efficiency is a valuable tool for improving the economic and environmental performance of such facilities. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is typically used to assess efficiency, allocating flexible weights (FS...

Water leakages and unplanned water supply interruptions are relevant variables in the provision of drinking water since they directly impact customers and the economic and environmental performance of water companies. For the first time, in this study, we estimated specific efficiency scores for these two quality-of-service variables using the mult...

Improving eco-efficiency in the provision of municipal solid waste plays an important role for a sustainable economy. Eco-efficiency of municipal solid waste service providers (MSWSPs) has been generally assessed using the conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) method. However, this approach is sensitive to data noise and has no statistical p...

Efficiency assessment is a valuable tool for industries that are regulated, such as the provision of drinking water. Hence, past research on this topic is wide. However, current, widely used approaches such as parametric, non-parametric and partial frontier methods present several limitations and pitfalls. Thus, here, the Efficiency Analysis Tree (...

Understanding water-energy nexus in the provision of drinking water services is a challenge which has outstanding relevance in the current climatic emergency. Environmental efficiency and eco-efficiency assessment of water companies are two useful tools to address this challenge. In this study, we estimated hyperbolic and enhanced hyperbolic distan...

The management of municipal solid waste (MSW) is a public service that affects the environment and public health. This study sought to assess the eco-productivity change (i.e., temporal dynamics of eco-efficiency) of a sample of municipalities in the provision of MSW management services. The Malmquist-Luenberger Productivity Indicator (MLPI) and it...

Getting a good understanding regarding the economic and environmental performance of water utilities is of great importance to achieve the goal of an efficient and sustainable industry. In this study, we apply the range adjusted measure (RAM) data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to evaluate the integrated (production and environmental) efficiency...

Designing and implementing innovative and effective policies to reduce domestic water demand is vital to enhance sustainability of cities. Past research has shown that Time-of-Use Tariffs (TOUT) is a powerful tool to reduce water consumption in urban settings. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of this dynamic water pricing approach might be influence...

The firms’ performance assessment for regulation requires estimating profit change and its drivers. This study estimates and decomposes profit changes into components such as output and input price changes, output growth, and markups. Using the stochastic frontier analysis, we compute the drivers of productivity change, such as technical change, re...

Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy costs has been one of the main challenges faced by the water sector. This study provides a quantification of energy costs and GHG emissions efficiency of a sample of the English and the Welsh water companies over the period of 2013-2018. In doing so, the multi-directional data envelopment analysis...

Access to safe, reliable and affordable drinking water is a human right that should be achieved without neglecting Sustainable Development Goal 13 of the United Nations related to climate action. The production of drinking water involves using a non-negligible amount of energy, leading to relevant economic costs and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions....

The measurement of efficiency of water utilities is a valuable tool for water regulators and managers to provide services in a sustainable way. Understanding the sources of inefficiency could support business decision making process. In this study we employ the most recent advanced panel data stochastic frontier models to estimate the level of over...

Improper municipal solid waste (MSW) management leads to contamination of water, soil and air with negative impacts on human health. Moreover, not dealing with residual waste has huge implications for meeting circular economy targets. Understanding how much it costs could lead to a better quality of service and boost environmental sustainability. T...

Comentarios respecto a la propuesta de creación de la Agencia Nacional del Agua en el proyecto de nueva Constitución.

This study applies a two-stage network structure model to evaluate water service providers cost and operational performance embracing service quality variables. An empirical analysis of the Chilean water and wastewater industries over the 2010–2018 period is presented. Moreover, in the second stage of analysis, we analyzed the impact of a set of ex...

Performance assessments of water utilities are essential to protect the interests of citizens, because utilities operate under natural monopolies and their costs are recovered from customers through water tariffs. In this study, a four-error component model was applied to estimate cost efficiency (CE), persistent efficiency (PE) and transient effic...

Water systems need to become more locally robust and sustainable in view of increased population demands and supply uncertainties. Decentralized treatment is often assumed to have the potential to improve the technical, environmental, and economic performance of current technologies. The techno-economic feasibility of implementing independent build...

Evaluating and benchmarking the energy efficiency of drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) is essential to improve the environmental and economic performance of these facilities. However, robust and reliable methods should be used to compute energy efficiency scores to avoid biased conclusions. In this study, the stochastic non-parametric envelop...

Comentarios a las normas propuestas por la Comisión de Medio Ambiente en lo relativo al estatuto constitucional del agua.

Moving towards a circular and sustainable economy requires improving the management of municipal solid waste (MSW) increasing recycling rates while minimising unsorted waste and operational costs. It is essential to evaluate the economic and environmental efficiency of MSW services. Previous studies focused on developed countries and employed radia...

Several methodological approaches have been applied to evaluate the performance of water companies for regulatory purposes. Performance assessment involving a long-time period is relevant to consider the heterogeneity of the water companies as many changes might have occurred across years. In this study, we applied three different parametric models...

Wastewater treatment is an energy-intensive process and therefore, improving the energy efficiency of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is relevant from an economic and environmental perspective. Water companies managing WWTPs operate under monopolistic conditions and thus, benchmarking their performance using robust methods is fundamental for re...

The measurement of efficiency of water utilities has been traditionally carried out using econometric methods or linear programming techniques. Alternatively, in this study a data mining non-parametric method is used, such as an artificial neural network (ANN) approach, to predict the efficiency of several water companies in England and Wales. The...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to estimate and compare the efficiency of several water utilities using three frontier techniques. Moreover, this study estimates the impact of several qualities of service variables on water utilities’ performance. Design/methodology/approach The paper utilizes three frontier techniques such as data envelopmen...

Rural areas are exposed to severe environmental pollution issues fed by industrial and agricultural activities combined with poor waste and sanitation management practices, struggling to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in line with Agenda 2030. Rural communities are examined through a “dual approach” as both contrib...

This study evaluates and compares the dynamic eco-efficiency of municipalities with publicly owned, privately owned, and mixed ownership solid waste utilities by estimating the Meta-frontier Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index for a sample of 68 major Italian towns. On average, the eco-productivity of Italian waste service providers increased b...

The water production system is a complex network and policy makers can get a better insight into how the system operates if they know how efficient each sub-process is. In this study, and for the first time, we employ a two-stage network Data Envelopment Analysis model to evaluate the eco-efficiency of water services in England and Wales, integrati...

This study examines the efficiency and productivity of the Chilean water and sewerage industry over the period 2010–2017 using a stochastic cost frontier model. This methodological approach allowed us to evaluate the impact of water companies´ ownership on their productivity. This is very relevant for the Chilean water and sewerage industry which i...

Moving to a more sustainable and low-carbon footprint urban water cycle is essential in the light of climate change. In this paper, we estimate the implicit cost of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for several English and Welsh water companies from 2013 to 2019. Using econometric techniques, we compute the shadow prices of direct and indirec...

En el contexto del proceso constituyente que se desarrolla actualmente en nuestro país, este trabajo, que reúne las miradas de distintas disciplinas, tiene el objetivo de efectuar, primero, un diagnóstico sucinto y general de la situación del agua en Chile, y, luego, aportar antecedentes para determinar qué aspectos de esta temática podrían incorpo...

This paper researches the existence of economies of scale and scope in the Chilean water and sewerage industry using a translog cost function approach over the period 2010–2017. It also provides estimates of productivity growth and its determinants, technical change and scale effect. The results suggest that on average, the water industry operates...

The water industry plays an important role in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and therefore, moving to a low-carbon urban water cycle is of great importance. However, traditional performance assessment of water companies ignores GHG emissions. To overcome this limitation and to compare productivity change estimations of water companies excl...

The water industry encompasses a wide variety of water companies operating with different production technologies. This study evaluated and compared changes to the productivity of several fully private water companies (FPWCs) and concessionary water companies (CWCs). Specifically, the cost Malmquist productivity index was estimated by integrating i...

Many regulators employ frontier techniques to measure the performance of regulated monopolistic companies. This study estimates the cost efficiency of the water sector using the stochastic non-parametric envelopment of data (StoNED) method which brings together the qualities of both data envelopment analysis (DEA) and stochastic frontier analysis (...

Quality of service (QS) is one of the most important parameters for evaluating the performance of water companies. It is a multidimensional concept that encompasses several performance indicators, with synthetic indicators that provide useful evaluation tools. Drinking water provision and wastewater treatment are basic services for which there is a...