Is there a difference between the energy and CO2 emission performance for China’s thermal power industry? A bootstrapped directional distance function approach

Abstract

A scientific evaluation of the energy efficiency and CO2 emission performance of the thermal power industry could not only provide valuable information for reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions but also serve as a tool to estimate the effectiveness of relevant policy reforms. Considering the opposite effects of energy conservation and carbon emission reduction on generation cost, this study respectively measures the energy and CO2 emission performance of the thermal power industries in China’s 30 provincial administrative regions during the period 2005–2012 from both static and dynamic perspectives. We implement the bootstrap method for the directional distance function to correct the possible estimate bias and test the significance of productivity changes where the weak disposability of undesirable outputs is also integrated. The empirical analysis leads to the following conclusions. The bootstrapping results could provide us with much valuable information because the initial estimates might result from sampling noise rather than reveal the real variations. In addition, some differences do exist between the energy and CO2 emission performance of China’s thermal power industry. Furthermore, technological progress is the main driving force for energy and CO2 emission productivity improvement and it works better for the former.