Abstract
The construction industry is a pillar industry of China's national economy but its problems of high energy consumption, high pollution, and low energy efficiency are increasingly prominent. The study on the energy efficiency of the construction industry is of great significance for improving development quality and achieving the goal of energy saving and emission reduction. In this paper, a three-stage undesirable SBM-DEA model was employed to measure the energy efficiency in the construction industry during 2005-2016. The CO2 directly emitted by the construction industry and indirectly emitted in the production of building materials were used as the undesirable output and the three-stage framework was employed to analyze and eliminate the influence of external environment. The empirical results showed that low efficiency of management in the construction industry is an important factor leading to the low level of energy efficiency in China's construction industry. For the energy efficiency value before and after adjustment, the "high-high" provinces have made full use of the superior external environment by their high management level, while the "high-low" provinces need to fully realize the potential in promoting energy efficiency of its external environment by improving its own management of the construction industry. On the contrary, the "low-high" provinces need to improve the external environment to ease its restrictions on the level of management in the construction industry. Environmental factors and management level should be considered simultaneously for different provinces to improve energy efficiency of the construction industry.
Highlights
The problems of resources, energy and environment have become increasingly prominent with the rapid development of economy and the acceleration of urbanization in China
The construction industry is an important emitter of carbon dioxide, haze and other pollutants (Lu et al, 2016; Feng et al, 2016), which will lead to a lot of grave consequences, such as lung diseases, traffic congestions in cities as well as economic loss (Zhang and Crooks, 2012).In view of the problems of high energy consumption, high pollution and low energy efficiency in construction, promoting the energy efficiency in the construction industry is crucial for improving development quality and achieving the goal of energy saving and emission reduction
Urbanization and human capital have a positive impact on energy efficiency, while government direct investment has a negative impact on energy efficiency
Summary
The problems of resources, energy and environment have become increasingly prominent with the rapid development of economy and the acceleration of urbanization in China. As an important pillar industry of China's national economy, the problems of high energy consumption, high pollution and low energy efficiency in construction industry was highlighted. Based on the measurement of energy efficiency in China’s construction industry, regional gaps, trends and influencing factors are the three main concerns in the discussion of this paper, followed by some policy implications for the sustainable development of China’s construction industry.
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