Research on Energy Efficiency Evaluation of Provinces along the Belt and Road under Carbon Emission Constraints: Based on Super-Efficient SBM and Malmquist Index Model

Abstract

About 50% of China’s total energy consumption is generated by the Belt and Road regions, which mainly involves 18 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions. To complement each other, the focus on total factor energy efficiency in key regions cannot be ignored. This paper selects the key domestic areas of the Belt and Road as the research object, follows the research ideas of static measurement and dynamic decomposition, and considers the constraints of carbon emissions. The super-efficiency SBM model can measure the energy efficiency statically and include all factors of each province and city from 2015 to 2019, and the Malmquist productivity index model is able to decompose the variation in total factor energy efficiency. The research results show that (1) there are apparent differences in energy efficiency among the provinces along the Belt and Road for the average total factor energy efficiency of the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road region is 1.03, which is significantly higher than that of the 12 provinces along the Silk Road Economic Belt; (2) from the perspective of time, the provinces along the Belt and Road’s total factor energy efficiency shows a fluctuating upward trend, which is deeply affected by technological progress; (3) from the perspective of index decomposition, the main reason for the low energy efficiency of the provinces in the Silk Road Economic Belt region is low technical efficiency, and the main factor supporting the improvement of the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road region energy efficiency is technological progress.