Evaluation of Provincial Carbon Emission Reduction Efficiency Based on Three-stage DEA Model

Abstract

In recent years, the ecological and environmental governance in China has been significantly strengthened. Environmental conditions have been effectively improved, but at the same time, carbon dioxide emissions are still on the rise. Therefore, it is of great significance to evaluate the carbon emission reduction efficiency of Chinese provinces. And it is helpful to realize green and low-carbon development. This paper evaluated the carbon reduction efficiency of Chinese 30 provinces from 2014-2016 by building three stage DEA model, which put the energy consumption and carbon emissions as input variables and put the GDP as the expected output variables. Then this paper uses the SFA model to eliminate the effect of industrial structure, technology R&D and external environment factors. The results show that: first, the overall carbon emission reduction efficiency is low, only Beijing and Hainan province is effective; second, the level of economic development has an important impact on the regional carbon emission efficiency, which cause a huge difference in 30 provinces; third, the scale efficiency of carbon emission reduction is generally high, and the main reason of the lower carbon emission reduction efficiency is the low pure technology efficiency. Finally, the authors bring some suggestions from government and enterprises level: enterprises should improve their awareness of emission reduction, increase their investment in scientific research, and have a positive respond to government policies; the government should give consideration to the development of the eastern and western regions, adjust the energy structure and promote industrial upgrading. At the same time, government should actively establish a market-oriented emission reduction system to improve the carbon emission reduction efficiency. Keywords—carbon emission reduction efficiency; three-stage DEA; SFA regression