Analysis of Total-Factor Energy Efficiency in China under Low Carbon Constraint

Abstract

This article considers energy, labor force and capital stock as the input variables that are commonly adopted by most of scholars. In order to demonstrate how the low-carbon economy affects energy efficiency in China, we use the so called low-carbon GDP as the output variable, which has never been discussed before and is different from the Green-GDP appearing in references. Based on the low-carbon GDP, we build a completely new input-output framework by using the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to explore total-factor energy efficiency (TFEE) in 30 provinces and cities of China during 1998–2016. The Malmquist index is applied to analyze the variation tendency of TFEE. Selecting the cross section data in 2016 for empirical comparative analysis, the result shows that TFEE varies greatly from region to region. The TFEE is highest in the eastern region, followed by the central region and lowest in the western region. Especially, TFEEs in Shanghai, Fujian and Beijing obtain the optimal efficiencies. The Malmquist index of most regions is larger than 1, indicating that the productivity has increased but there may be the rebound effect. Besides, most of the provinces and cities in China show a downward tendency in technological progress.