Congestion effects of energy and capital in China's carbon emission reduction: Evidence from provincial levels

Abstract

Global carbon emission control and resource conservation are important measures to realize sustainable development goals. There are few researches on carbon emissions from the perspective of congestion with the data envelopment analysis method. Congestion effects not only help us to reduce carbon emissions, but also achieve reasonable allocation of resources. This paper expands traditional congestion into undesirable congestion and desirable congestion, and both are divided into undesirable congestion of energy (capital) and desirable congestion of energy (capital) in 30 Chinese provinces with a two-stage model. So, purely technical inefficiency is separated from congestion, and energy and capital utilization can be analyzed simultaneously. The results show that: (1) China has a higher carbon emission reduction potential under natural disposability than that under managerial disposability. (2) The number of provinces with undesirable congestion of energy in the eastern region is small, while that with undesirable congestion of capital in the western region is small. (3) The number of provinces with desirable congestion increases. Desirable congestion of energy and capital is mainly concentrated in the eastern and central regions. Exploring the congestion effects of energy and capital will help China to achieve “dual carbon” targets and promote the environmental, social, and governance investment.