Temporospatial pattern of carbon emission efficiency of China’s energy-intensive industries and its policy implications

Abstract

Energy-intensive industries are the primary sectors of energy and resources consumption and carbon emissions. Exploring the temporospatial pattern and influencing factors of carbon emission efficiency (CEE) of energy-intensive industries helps discover the contribution of energy-intensive industries to regional carbon emissions and formulate different regional low-carbon industry development strategies. Through three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, the CEE of energy-intensive industries of China was estimated from provincial level, and the temporospatial distribution and influencing factors of CEE were analyzed by spatial autocorrelation analysis and Tobit model. The results showed that CEE of energy-intensive industries decreased from 0.649 to 0.587 during 2005–2017 with a decreasing rate of 9.60% annually, while the carbon emissions increased from 0.80 to 1.31 billion tonnes during 2005–2017. CEE of energy-intensive industries in China has obvious spatial heterogeneity and spatial agglomeration. CEE of the eastern provinces is relatively higher, while that of the western regions is lower. It showed that the scale efficiency (SE) of energy-intensive industries is close to the optimal frontier, while the pure technical efficiency (PTE) of energy-intensive industries should be improved in the future. Change of CEE of China’s provinces may fall into five categories: high-high-high, low-high-high, low-low-high, low-low-low, and low-high-low. Industry scale (IS) and research and development (R&D) are promoting factors for the CEE of energy-intensive industries, while energy intensity (EI), capital formation rate (CF) and water intensity (WI) are negative factors. To improve CEE and promote cleaner production of energy-intensive industries, the technological innovation capacity should be further improved, energy structure should be adjusted, energy and water consumption should be restrained and the open economic system should be further promoted in central and western China in the future, which help to realize the dislocation, coordination, and high-quality development of energy-intensive industries among China’s provinces.