Economic and environmental efficiency of co-operative sector sugar mills in Tamil Nadu state of India

A study was done to analyse the economics and environmental efficiency of various combinations of integration of co-operative sector sugar mills in Tamil Nadu with distillery and co-generation plant through Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM). PAM helped to incorporate the policy interventions and environmental externalities (cost and benefit), so that the analysis results would render policy interventions to support the economic and environment efficient combination of integration. A comparison of results from PAM for various possible combinations showed the integration of sugar mill with distillery (ethanol) and co-generation plant as efficient to provide the industry with a positive net income with least negative externalities on environment.