Abstract
We calculated provincial carbon emissions efficiency and related influencing factors in China with the purpose of providing a reference for other developing countries to develop a green economy. Using panel data covering the period from 2004–2016 from 30 provinces in China, we calculated the carbon emission performance (CEP) and the technology gap ratio of carbon emission (TGR) with the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method and the meta-frontier model separately to analyze provincial carbon emissions efficiency in China. No matter which indicator was employed, we found that distinct differences exist in the eastern, the central, and the western regions of China, and the eastern region has the highest carbon emission performance, followed by the central and the western regions. Then, the panel data Tobit regression model was employed to analyze the influencing factors of carbon emissions efficiency, and we found that scale economy, industrial structure, degree of opening up, foreign direct investment (FDI), energy intensity, government interference, ownership structure, and capital-labor ratio have different impacts on the carbon emission efficiency in different regions of China, which indicates different policies should be implemented in different regions.
Highlights
Carbon dioxide-based greenhouse gas emissions are posing a growing challenge to global climate change
The United Nation’s (UN) intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that the global average surface temperature rose by 0.6 degrees Celsius, and the snow cover area and the glacier area decreased by 10% and 10%–15%, respectively, in the 20th century
Single-factor indictor is the earliest indicator of carbon emission performance, and the ratio between the carbon emissions and a certain element is usually regarded as the standard of carbon emission efficiency, which includes the carbon production efficiency proposed by Japanese scholar Kaya, the consumption of carbon dioxide per unit energy proposed by Mielnik and Goldemberg, and the carbon intensity proposed by Sun [16]
Summary
Carbon dioxide-based greenhouse gas emissions are posing a growing challenge to global climate change. Due to the huge differences in economic scale, resource endowment, industrial structure, and energy consumption structure among Chinese provinces, the inter-provincial carbon intensity varies greatly. It is extremely difficult for different regions to realize the goal of energy conservation and emissions reduction by adopting similar methods. The panel data Tobit model was adopted to analyze the influencing factors of CEP and TGR, and we studied the differences between the influencing factors of carbon emission efficiency in different regions within China, which provides a reference for other developing countries to develop green economy.
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