A comprehensive analysis of China’s regional energy and environment efficiency from supply chain perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACT With the rapid development of China’s economy, the problems of China’s energy shortage and environmental pollution have become increasingly prominent. However, few studies have evaluated energy and environment efficiency from the perspective of energy production and energy utilisation. From supply chain perspective, this paper uses a two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to measure the efficiency of China’s regional energy and environment by considering both energy production and utilisation systems. Specifically, the production in each region is regarded as a two-stage network structure. The first stage is the energy production system, and the second stage is the energy utilisation system. Then, an efficiency decomposition programme is proposed to obtain the highest subsystem efficiency. Our empirical study on 30 main province-level regions of Chinese mainland shows that most of these regions are inefficient in both stages of energy production and utilisation. The energy production system has a negative impact on overall efficiency. In addition, China’s three major areas have unbalanced development. The eastern has the highest efficiency, followed by the central, and then the western part. Our empirical results provide effective measures in improving energy and environment efficiency.