Optimism, pessimism, and chaos worldwide: A comparative study of energy management performance with robust benchmarking methods

Assessing national Energy Management Performance (EMP) is vital but faces methodological challenges, including weighting subjectivity and sensitivity to outliers and contextual factors in frontier analysis. This study addresses these issues by comparing EMP across 174 countries (c. 2022) using 13 core indicators. It employs Benefit-of-the-Doubt (BoD) modeling (optimistic and pessimistic), robust unconditional order- m analysis ( m = 40 ), and conditional order- m analysis incorporating nine environmental variables (e.g., Human Development Index, Environmental Performance Index) to evaluate contextual influence. Results from the initial BoD analysis (optimistic vs. pessimistic) revealed significant divergence and a moderate negative correlation (rank correlation ρ ≈ − 0.4 ) between optimistic and pessimistic scores and ranks, indicating performance specialization. The unconditional order- m analysis ( m = 40 ) yielded an average efficiency potential of 0.873, though 39 top-performing countries could not be evaluated as they defined the frontier. The conditional order- m analysis, accounting for environmental context, resulted in high efficiency scores (mean > 0.97 ). Critically, country rankings remained exceptionally stable (Spearman’s ρ ≥ 0.96 ) when comparing conditional results to baseline BoD ranks and across different environmental contexts. This suggests that while context theoretically matters, its influence on relative EMP rankings, as assessed by this specific conditional methodology, was minimal, likely due to high baseline BoD performance levels. • Optimistic vs pessimistic benchmarking reveals widespread performance specialization. • Country rankings are exceptionally stable even when accounting for external context. • Unconditional order-m analysis finds a 12.7 % average potential for optimization. • Policy should focus on core indicators, as context has minimal impact on rankings. • Case studies show how BoD reveals different structural strategies for top performance.