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China needs to achieve its carbon peaking target with minimal economic costs. This paper proposes a framework for achieving the carbon peaking target that emphasizes economic effects. Based on the prediction, the parametric directional distance function (DDF) is adopted to calculate the total factor carbon emission efficiency and marginal carbon abatement cost in each region of China before 2030, and the allocation scheme of the abatement tasks necessary for carbon peaking is optimized from the perspective of least cost. The empirical results show the following: (1) The predicted rapid growth of China's economy from 2020 to 2030 will lead to a rapid increase in marginal abatement costs, with the average marginal carbon abatement cost increasing from 8,833 yuan/ton to 15,077 yuan/ton. The cost of carbon emission reduction in the future is very expensive. (2) The measured marginal abatement costs in China are positively correlated with carbon emission efficiency. In order to ensure economic development, developed regions should try to maintain the development trend, while the central and western regions take on more emission reduction tasks. (3) The emission efficiency is improved by optimizing the allocation scheme of the abatement tasks required to reach the peak, and the scientific and orderly path to reach the peak of each province and the corresponding lowest economic cost are obtained. This paper are of great theoretical and practical significance for the initial quota allocation in carbon trading market and ensuring the achievement of carbon peaking target under economic effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper mainly uses the super-efficiency EBM model to measure the environmental efficiency of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2019, utilizes the Theil index to analyze the degree of differentiation, and investigate the stochastic convergence of environmental efficiency in different regions. At the same time, it focuses on exploring the direction, intensity, and changing trend of the internal driving factors of environmental efficiency including fiscal decentralization and tax competition, so as to measure and show the overall situation of circular economy development. The research results show that (1) from a national perspective, environmental efficiency shows a pattern of gradual convergence from east to west and from coast to inland. There is a significant stepped regional imbalance in the development level of circular economy in the eastern coastal areas and the central, western inland areas. (2) The differences in environmental efficiency among the four major economic regions were apparently significant while the differences inside each region itself were relatively minor, although in a trend of being gradually widened. There are differences in the development level of circular economy in different regions or within the same region. (3) The inter-provincial efficiency in the eastern, western and northeastern zones maintained relatively stable, while the inter-provincial differences in the central region were expanding. The environmental deficit problem caused by economic development has been alleviated and the basic development model of circular economy has been initially established. (4) Economic development has played a positive role in improving the environmental efficiency of the region. But the resident consumption level inhibited the improvement of the environmental efficiency level of the surrounding areas. The conclusion of this paper can provide a macroscopic reference for the government in finding effective countermeasures to improve environmental efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green port construction has a profound impact on China's international climate commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050. To examine the carbon emission reduction potential of 20 major ports in the Yangtze River Delta port cluster of China, this study takes the perspective of environmental efficiency and employs dynamic exogenous variable DEA in efficiency evaluation. The results show the increasing environmental efficiency of the ports in the Yangtze River Delta, rising from 0.5116 in 2013 to 0.7276 in 2019. Also, there are significant spatial differences in efficiency. After considering exogenous variable, the average efficiency has increased from 0.5537 to 0.6276, indicating that regional green development is a critical factor in port environmental efficiency evaluation. Finally, the overall efficiency of input and output have risen, the slackness of carbon emission shows a trend of decreasing, and there is great potential for reducing carbon emissions from the perspective of port environmental efficiency. The previous studies paid less attention to dynamic efficiency, exogenous variables, and carbon emission. Therefore, this paper is the first comprehensive examination on the carbon emission reduction potential of China's Yangtze River Delta port cluster from the perspective of dynamic environmental efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on regional economic development theories, industrial development strategies implemented by governments can distort factor market allocations, change the viability of firms, and thus bring about structural changes in industries. How such policy changes will affect regional environmental performance has been relatively little discussed in the existing literature. This paper attempts to explain whether the implementation of an industrial catch-up development strategy can be a major influence on the level of regional environmental performance from the perspective of comparative advantage, and how this influence can be achieved by changing technological progress. As for the measurement of environmental performance, this paper innovatively adopts two improved measurements based on by-production technology theory to measure the regional environmental performance of Chinese provincial regions from 1997 to 2016. Moreover, the other main novelty is that it adopts Tobit regression models to explicitly explore the effective effects and impact mechanisms of government development strategies on regional environmental efficiency in China. The key findings are as follows (i) the implementation of an industrial catch-up development strategy that defies the comparative advantage of a region can lead to poor environmental performance. (ii). the comparative advantage defying strategy adopted by the eastern regions with higher level of economic development and the regions with priority protection of resources and environment has less inhibiting effect on environmental performance than the central and western regions. (iii). development strategy does impact environmental efficiency through technological progress; more precisely, through technology import and technological transformation rather than independent R&D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eco-efficiency, as one of the evaluation tools for sustainable development performance, has been a widely discussed topic in academia for the past several decades. However, the existing research on eco-efficiency is rather homogeneous. Most of it is based on the construction of a system of indicators that includes ecological constraints to evaluate its overall eco-efficiency, but it treats the eco-economic system as a 'black box', ignoring the fact that it is actually composed of several sub-systems. In this paper, based on a two-stage resource-environment system perspective, we construct a Super-NEBM model considering undesirable outputs to measure urban ecological efficiency; a spatial Durbin model is then used to analyse its influencing factors. The results indicate that (1) China's urban eco-efficiency levels are fluctuating, with a decreasing "east-central/northeast-west" trend. (2) The spatial heterogeneity of ecological efficiency levels in Chinese cities is obvious, with significant spatial agglomeration effects. (3) There are positive spatial spillover effects on the ecological efficiency of Chinese cities; economic development, industrial structure, financial development, population density, innovation capacity, infrastructure, marketisation and informatisation all have important direct effects on urban ecological efficiency; in addition, economic development, financial development, population density, marketisation, informatisation and foreign investment all have significant indirect effects of varying degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's economy in the past 10 years has developed rapidly and achieved great success, but at the same time, environmental problems have been deteriorating, seriously hindering the country's regional sustainable development. This paper proposes a common-weights DEA model based on "the priority of choosing common weights" to assess the environmental performance of 30 provinces from 2006 to 2015 and analyzes regional development in combination with China's economic division. This paper also introduces the biennial Malmquist Productivity Index (BMPI) to study environmental productivity levels during the 11th and 12th Five Year Plans (FYP) from a time series perspective. The results present a large gap in regional environmental efficiency, mainly manifested by the fact that the eastern and northeastern regions' environmental condition is obviously better than that of the central and western regions. BMPI analysis indicates that the overall environmental performances during the 11th and 12th FYPs did not improve significantly, with a clear imbalance in the western region, implying that its development potential is huge. On this basis, we offer some suggestions for improving the environmental performance of different regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental efficiency (EE) was the efficiency that simultaneously targets economic benefits and environmental protection, requiring producers to provide higher levels of value under the premise of lower material and energy input and lower emissions. Waste treatment systems play an important place in the reduction of pathogen loading and then influence the environmental efficiency of farms. Based on a field study, take chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total nitrogen (TN) excretion as undesirable outputs, the paper aims to measure the EE considering the difference of waste treatment methods of sample pig farms. Technical efficiency (TE) and the contributing factors of environmental efficiency were also estimated. Results show that the environmental efficiency is significantly lower than technical efficiency. Years in the profession, manure treatment income, and receiving manure treatment subsidies had significant positive effects on environmental efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 14th Five-Year Plan period is a critical period for China to achieve high-quality development. Based on super-efficiency slacks-based measure (SBM) model, grey-related analysis (GRA) and other models, this paper studies the heterogeneity of the coupling relationship among technological innovation, industrial transformation and environmental efficiency in the Huaihai Economic Zone during the period of 2005–2019. In addition, it analyzes the coupling mechanism of single and binary systems to the ternary system, which is of great significance for the collaborative symbiosis among systems. The findings are as follows. 1) The technological innovation, industrial transformation and environmental efficiency (TIE) systems of the Huaihai Economic Zone had significant spatial-temporal heterogeneity. Although their evaluation value fluctuated, the development trends are all positive. Ultimately, technological innovation is characterized by being high in the northeast and low in the southwest around Xuzhou, while other systems are relatively staggered in space. 2) The coupling of TIE systems is in transition, lack of orderly integration and benign interaction. However, the developing trend of interaction is also upward, and a spatial pattern driven by Xuzhou and Linyi as the dual cores has gradually formed. Moreover, the coupling is mostly manifested as outdated technological innovation and industrial transformation. Except for the final coordination of regenerative cities, the other resource types are all in transition. Cities in all traffic locations are still in transition. The overall system interaction of cities on Longhai Line (Lanzhou-Lianyungang Railway) is relatively optimal, and cities on Xinshi Line (Xinxiang-Rizhao Railway) are accelerating toward synergy. 3) The coupling status of TIE systems depends on the development of the single system and the interaction of the binary (2E) system. The coupling is closely related to technological innovation and Technology-Industry system, and is hindered by the inefficient interaction of Technology-Environment system. Specifically, the synergy of regenerative cities is attributed to the advantage of a single system and the effective integration of 2E systems. Beneficial from the advantages of environmental efficiency, the cities on Xinshi Line promote the synergy of the 2E and TIE systems. Therefore, while the Huaihai Economic Zone stimulates the development potential of the single and 2E systems, it is necessary to amplify the superimposition effect of systems in accordance on the basis of resource and location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of environmental regulation on regional environmental efficiency convergence using the fixed effects model and threshold regression model. The results show that the differences in environmental efficiency have a convergence trend in China, as well as in the eastern, central and western regions. The effect of environmental regulation on regional environmental efficiency is inhibition first and then promotion, research and development investment and outward foreign direct investment have a positive transmission effect; when environmental regulation intensity exceeds a certain threshold, the growth rate of environmental efficiency in the central and western regions will be significantly higher than that in the eastern regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid economic development of China has intensified the country's many problems. Among them, energy shortage and environmental pollution are two main problems, which highly affects the economic growth and sustainable development. To achieve more rapid green growth, the innovative technology by reusing the environmental wastes has been widely used since doing so not only decreases the environment pollution, but also further brings more natural resource. The present paper establishes a two-stage structure for evaluating the regional green growth and sustainable development in China by calculating the efficiency of "energy saving" and "pollution treatment" separately. Specifically, a set of models based on slack-based measure approach are constructed in which non-discretionary inputs can be calculated in both resource utilization stage and pollution treatment stage. Comparing with the traditional models, the new proposed models can measure the performance of resources saving and pollution treatment with considering the influence of non-discretionary inputs. An empirical application on Chinese 30 regions during 2011–2015 have been done to illustrate the use of our framework and the performance of regional green growth and sustainable development. Based on the efficiency results, we find that the efficiency scores of the provinces in central and northeast area are lower, which is mostly caused by their poor performance on "pollution treatment". Both the environmental efficiency scores and target values for performance improvement are obtained in this paper to enlighten the corresponding decision-makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's industrial economic model of high emissions and low efficiency has caused a series of environmental problems. Improving energy efficiency is an inevitable choice to solve the dual dilemma of pollution and energy shortage and to achieve carbon peak and neutrality. It is difficult to achieve green development solely through traditional governance; therefore, digital inclusive finance (DIF) is considered a new measure to help the green transformation of China's industry. Based on the assessment of industrial environmental efficiency (IEE) of 30 provinces from 2011 to 2021 by combining the super-efficiency EBM model and the group frontier technology considering provincial heterogeneity, the paper investigates the impact of DIF on the environmental efficiency of Chinese industry and its internal mechanism. The results show that DIF has a driving effect on industrial green transformation, especially the deep development of DIF, which can play a positive role in environmental efficiency for a long time and can give full play to the targeting feature of big data, focusing on regions with serious pollution, financing difficulties, high natural resource, and poor financial endowment. DIF can reduce enterprise financing costs and drive industrial innovation; however, the path of promoting industrial green transformation through regional servitization needs to be improved. In addition, under appropriate regulatory constraints, DIF has a more positive driving effect on the environmental efficiency of the Chinese industry. This article is useful to address the issue of industrial green transformation by interdisciplinary research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the environmental efficiency of the ports is measured. Labour, fund and infrastructure input are selected as the inputs, container throughput, cargo throughput and main business income are selected as the outputs, CO2emission is chosen as the undesirable output. A new model—RAM-Tobit-RAM (Range Adjusted Measure) with undesirable outputs is built to evaluate the environmental efficiency. Ten Chinese ports from 2004 to 2013 are taken as the samples to verify its rationality. The results suggest that it is not necessarily beneficial for environmental efficiency to expand the port scale. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper uses spatial econometric and the threshold effect models to study the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) in China's energy conservation and emissions reduction. We use provincial-level data on pollutants (CO2, wastewater emission, exhaust emission, and waste emission) available from 2001 to 2015. Results indicated that FDI not only promotes China's "energy conservation," but also improves China's CO2 emission efficiency and environmental efficiency. We find that export-oriented foreign companies can significantly improve China's energy efficiency and water quality. FDI enhances energy efficiency through eco-oriented technological progress and water quality, air quality through production-oriented technological progress. We also find that the impact of FDI on China's energy conservation and emission reduction has significant threshold effects. Our findings contradict the often believed "pollution haven hypothesis." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to generate quantitative managerial insights for the improvement of the energy-saving potential and the coordinated development between economic growth and environmental protection. Design/methodology/approach: A novel data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, based on the classical DEA theory, is developed from the perspective of emission reduction. Findings: The empirical results indicate that China's overall environmental efficiency is low and that there is huge improvement space for energy saving. Under the concerns of emission reduction, the energy-saving potential of the central region exceeds that of both the eastern and western regions. With regard to water, electricity and gas consumption, the electricity-saving potential exceeds the potential for both water saving and gas saving. Originality/value: Previous studies rarely focused on the energy-saving potential, while considering environmental pollution. This paper applies a novel DEA method to evaluate the energy-saving potential of 30 Chinese provinces for 2015 with a focus on emission reduction concerns. Furthermore, both regional differences and energy type differences of the saving potential were analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, the development of green economy and the improvement of environmental efficiency have been a hotspot in both academia and industry. Especially, the effect of the collaborative agglomeration of manufacturing and productive services industries on environmental efficiency has drawn attention from Chinese policymakers, during a critical period of industrial transformation and upgrading and ecological civilization construction in China. However, few studies have explored whether and how industrial collaborative agglomeration affects environmental efficiency based on population structure perspective. To bridge this gap, using the methods of the stochastic frontier approach (SFA), the moderating effect of population structure, and the spatial effect, and employing the panel data of 66 cities in eastern China during 2009-2018, this paper studies the effect of industrial collaborative agglomeration on environmental efficiency and measure the fluctuates of influence including population structure. The results show that industrial collaborative agglomeration has the effect of improving environmental efficiency, and both of them have strong spatial spillover effect. Direct effect of the industrial collaborative agglomeration is more significant positive than indirect effect. It indicates that the environmental efficiency is affected by the industrial collaborative agglomeration in both the local region and neighboring regions. In addition, population density, aging and quality play a positive moderate role by strengthening the spillover effect of industrial collaborative agglomeration, while the moderating effect of population urbanization is not significant. Then, the recommendations and policy implications to improve environmental efficiency are put forward based on the research results: optimizing the coordinated governance system of regional ecological environment, accelerating the innovation of industrial value chain, and promoting the sustainable development of industry and ecology with the advantage of population structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to introduce haze pollution into the environmental efficiency evaluation framework and measures PM2.5 environmental efficiency in China during 2001–2017 based on the slack-based measure (SBM)-undesirable model. The results show that the PM2.5 environmental efficiency value is 0.707 in China with a trend of slow decline over time, and there is regional diversity in PM2.5 environmental efficiency, with eastern, central and western values of 0.912, 0.554 and 0.601, respectively. Furthermore, this study examines the impact of PM2.5 environmental efficiency (EFF) on public health. The empirical findings indicate that EFF has a significant positive impact on public health. That is, if EFF is increased by 1%, respiratory disease mortality per 10,000 persons will be decreased by 2% provided that all other variables remain unchanged. In addition, medical technical personal in healthcare institutions per 1000 persons (RYS), population density (POP) and urbanization level (CITY) play an active role in promoting the level of public health. However, healthcare expenditure as a percentage of the per capita disposable income of rural households (NC), health expenditure as a percentage of GDP in fiscal expenditure (GJK) and the per capita tobacco expenditure of urban households (YC) all hinder the improvement of public health. Finally, the paper fails to observe a significant relationship between healthcare expenditure as a percentage of per capita disposable income of urban households (CZ), the enrolment rate of school-age children (EDU) and public health. Finally, this paper provides policy recommendations on controlling haze pollution, developing an efficient economy and improving public health in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improving environmental efficiency of thermal power plants is a crucial way to realize green and sustainable development. This paper investigates environmental efficiency of thermal power plants in China in 2011, 2013, and 2015 by conceptualizing a modified super-efficiency slacks-based measure with materials balance principle (MBP), which also eliminates the infeasibility in Malmquist–Luenberger index (MLI). An improved MLI is proposed based on the new efficiency measure. The results show that (1) the thermal power plants in most provinces have high environmental efficiency and productivity. (2) The improvement of productivity mainly originates from technical progress. This study provides a new perspective for environmental efficiency measurement on thermal power plants and advances related studies by (1) considering the first law of thermodynamics and introducing MBP in measuring environmental efficiency of thermal power plants and (2) defining a new MLI that captures the efficiency change and technical change in a super-efficiency framework. The thermal power plants in China can improve their environmental performance based on the results of current study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture produced the largest methane emissions in China. It is of great importance to investigate effect of fertilizer using intensity on the environmental efficiency of China’s agriculture. This paper mainly investigates the determinants of environmental efficiency of China’s agriculture. First, we estimate environmental efficiency of China’s agriculture of 30 provinces from 1997 to 2014 through metafrontier SBM super efficiency with undesirable outputs, which allow for technology heterogeneity in different regions. Then, we compare environmental efficiency in different regions. Furthermore, we also analyze whether heterogeneity of environmental technology widened or decreased. Last, we also explore the determinants of environmental efficiency of China’s agriculture through bootstrap truncation regression. We find that fertilizer intensity negatively affects environmental efficiency. Urbanization has significant positive (1.454) effect on environmental efficiency under metafrontier in the east. It is significant use more organic fertilizer to decrease CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions. It is important to enhance environmental innovation for China’s agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nonconventional by-production approach with respect to the freely disposable inputs but without the weakly disposable and null-joint outputs has been proposed to describe the pollution generating technologies since 2012. To amend the contradictory trade-offs among inputs, intended and unintended outputs, which generate in the previous conventional pollution-generating technologies, the new by-production approach decomposes the general pollution generating technology as classical intended production technology and nature's residual-generation mechanism. In this paper, some production and environmental efficiency indexes will be extended and firstly applied in the study of regional technical efficiency level with considering the energy utilization and air pollutants emission in China. Based on our calculating results, there exists the obvious variation in the regional technical efficiency level with the regional geographic separation. Eastcoast area ranks the highest in production efficiency measurement, and the West has the lowest levels in both production and environmental efficiency. Through conducting some reason discussions, our new efficiency results based on the by-production approach are consistent with the fact of Chinas unbalanced regional development pattern and also reveal the ineffectiveness of current environmental policy implementations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resource constraints and environmental pollution are common problems that have long plagued sustainable development, and enhancing the efficiency of green development is the key to cracking the problems. Previous studies have not jointly examined the green economic production efficiency and environmental pollution control efficiency of industrial and service sectors, to fill this research gap, this paper use the constructed meta-frontier, dynamic network Super-SBM (slacks-based measure) model to evaluate the environmental efficiency in China's 30 provinces and 107 cities. The results reveal that, (1) the green production efficiency of industrial and service sectors showed a fluctuating downward trend, and the pollution control efficiency improved first and then decreased. The overall environmental efficiency of both sectors is low, indicating a strong potential for improvement of the green development in China. (2) The overall environmental efficiency of industrial and service sectors has obvious regional heterogeneity, and which decreases as the weight of treatment stage increases. Additionly, the overall environmental efficiency of industry is greater than that of service industry. (3) The input inefficiency of the production stage and output inefficiency of the treatment stage are the main sources of inefficiency for the industry and service industry. [Display omitted] • This paper construct a meta-frontier, dynamic network Super-SBM model. • We analyze historical efficiency of GEP and EPC in industrial and service sectors. • Two sectors's efficiency has not been significantly improved from 1991 to 2020. • There is sectoral, regional and stage heterogeneity in efficiency. • "High input of production" and "low output of control" hinder effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the environmental efficiency of Chinese urban agglomerations (UAs) based on a non-parametric meta-frontier approach. We find most of UAs has a large gap and imbalance of environmental performance under meta-frontier. The meta-efficiencies of eastern and southern coastal areas are better than that of middle and western. Besides, the efficiency difference of cities in each UA is relatively small, which may be caused by the technology spillover effect. In addition, the average technology gap among most UAs exists but not so huge. Based on the findings, we provide specific suggestions for Chinese central and local governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's economy has experienced rapid development in the last several decades. However, environmental problems emerge along with the fast economic growth. Industrial pollutions and wastes have attracted much concern from the government and the public. In this paper, we propose a modified distance friction minimization model with undesirable outputs to evaluate the environmental efficiency of China's regional industry from 2011 to 2015. We then provide benchmarking targets for inefficient regions. Our approach can not only analyze the internal factors of the poorly performing regions but also set the benchmarking targets in which the inefficient regions need the least effort to be efficient. The analysis results indicate that the developed regions perform better than the developing ones. In particular, the regions that have always been efficient from 2011 to 2015 are all developed ones to our knowledge. Moreover, the gap in environmental performance tends to extend between developed and developing areas every year. We suggest that the Chinese government should formulate and perfect relative regulations and laws on environmental protection and take measures to reduce the unbalanced trend of its regional industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What China committed in the Paris Agreement encourages the penetration of renewable energy in power grid. To consume more renewable energy, coal-fired units undertake the most part of peak shaving task and are usually operated at a low-load level during off-peak hours. However, deep peak shaving has harmed the benefits of thermal power plants and also brought about environmental problems. To improve the peak-shaving capacity and operation efficiency of coal-fired units, the government encourages the flexibility retrofits for coal-fired units. In this paper, peak-shaving related cost functions are proposed for the multi-angle economic analysis of coal-fired unit with plasma ignition (UPI) and oil injection (UOI), respectively. First, the operation characteristic is analyzed for three stages of peak shaving, and then the peak-shaving costs related to these three stages are proposed in terms of the coal consumption cost, wear-and-tear cost, combustion-supporting cost, and environmental cost. Afterwards, a peak-shaving cost-based economic dispatch model is presented with consideration of the curtailed wind penalty, and an environmental efficiency index is defined to evaluate the environmental benefits. Finally, in the case study, quantitative economy analysis is performed from the aspects of thermal power plants, wind power plants, and the environment separately, and the simulation results indicate that UPI has better peak-shaving economy and environmental efficiency than UOI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing amount of resources is being utilized to combat the pollution problem in China. Measuring and improving the efficiency of this resource allocation is an effective way to promote pollution treatment at the present technical level. This paper utilizes a two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model to attain allocation results based on the zero-sum gain and fixed-sum gain assumptions. We divide all the inputs into discretionary and non-discretionary inputs and construct two models for allocating resources based on the environmental efficiency scores. The new models are applied to calculate the performance and resource allocation scheme of 30 Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2015. Most provinces are inefficient at controlling pollution emission or treating pollution while using the given level of input resources. Based on the production possibility set of each province in 2015, the processing capacity of wastewater and gas could be increased by 1% and 3%, respectively, by reallocating resources for pollution treatment among different provinces. Environmental efficiency scores and resource allocation plans based on various assumptions are obtained in this paper to enlighten the corresponding decision-makers. Image 1 • The paper constructs two resource allocation models based on the DEA approach. • This research considers the allocation of public pollution treatment resources between different sectors. • Two strategies for resource allocation are composed to deal with different conditions relating to resources. • We apply the new models to measure the performance of 30 regions in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Over recent decades, China's economy has continued to develop steadily and rapidly, contributing to a large environmental cost. Therefore, many researchers propose various methods to evaluate environmental efficiency to deal with these serious issues accurately. This paper is the first to evaluate environmental efficiency using a model featuring not only a parallel structure with three component processes (primary, secondary, and tertiary industries) in the first stage but also a sewage treatment process in the second stage. Simultaneously, we propose radial but also nonradial versions of the Environmental Multiple Variable Return to Scale (EMVRS) model. These two models both consider shared inputs as well as shared outputs, and the proportion of the shared inputs and shared outputs utilized in each component process is assumed to be unknown. Additionally, we further analyze the factors influencing environmental efficiency by utilizing the Tobit model. The results when EMVRS is applied to Chinese provinces can be divided into 3 parts: (1) Most provinces do not purify wastewater appropriately contributing to the bad environmental efficiency. (2) The efficiency values of the three industry types are similar or identical to each other in most provinces. (3) The population of people employed negatively impacts environmental efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the rapid development of transportation industry brings economic benefits, at the same time, the problem of environmental pollution is becoming more and more serious. The emission of CO 2 intensifies the trend of global warming. How to measure the development of environment and economy is a huge challenge for us. This paper proposes a data envelopment analysis (DEA) method based on slacks-based measure (SBM) to evaluate the environmental and economic performance of the transportation industry from 2015 to 2017. According to the economic region, 30 provinces in China are divided into northeast, east, central and western regions for efficiency analysis. The model can determine the low efficiency decision units and finally put forward improvement suggestions for the low efficiency areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) window analysis, a decision-making unit (DMU) in each window is treated as different units in each period so that the evaluation for one unit is performed on different scales over time. This paper proposes a novel window analysis based on common weight across time (CWAT), which evaluates each unit in each window by its common scale independent of time. The model for obtaining common weights is described as linear programming. And the paper suggests the Malmquist productivity index (MPI) on CWAT, CWAT MPI, to analyze productivity change by inheriting the result of window analysis. The numerical experiments are illustrated to examine the validity of CWAT and MPI, and the result shows that the proposed method provides a new evaluation scale compared to previous studies. The proposed model is applied to evaluate the performance of China 45 iron and steel enterprises during 2009–2017. The energy and environmental efficiency are calculated using CWAT, and CWAT MPI analyzes the productivity change. • We study a DEA window analysis based on common weights. • The proposed DEA window is represented by linear programming. • We discuss the Malmquist index in the DEA window. • The MPI is the geometric mean of all indices calculated in individual windows. • The performance of the iron and steel enterprises is evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that the efficiency of a system (decision-making unit) and its subsystem cannot be properly measured using a two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model either in cooperative or non-cooperative evaluation. Indeed, the existing methods subjectively determine the status of the subsystems in the whole system. The two-stage DEA models, either cooperative game or non-cooperative game, are used to analyze the environmental efficiency. However, when the actual relationship between the two subsystems is inconsistent with the subjective relationship assumptions, the overall efficiency of the system and the efficiency of each subsystem will be biased. The conventional two-stage DEA models require predetermining the relationship between the subsystems within the system based on the subjective judgment of the decision-maker. Based on this, this paper proposes a three-step method to solve the two-stage DEA. First, the position relation among subsystems is determined according to the optimal weights through the model. According to the status relationship among subsystems, the decision units are grouped, and the two-stage DEA model of cooperative game or non-cooperative game is used to analyze the efficiency in each group. This method reduces the subjectivity of decision making and analyzes the efficiency of each decision unit applying the most appropriate two-stage DEA model to find the source of inefficiency. Finally, this paper verifies the rationality and validity of the method by analyzing the water use efficiency of industrial systems in China. It is found that most regions in China value economic development more than environmental protection (as evidenced by the DEA weights). What is more, the method proposed by the paper can be generalized for any two-stage DEA problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is one of the issues of current concern for international research engaged in data envelopment analysis (DEA) that how to achieve more accurate results of environmental and energy efficiency evaluation. Past studies about the application of DEA to environmental performance measurement often follow the concept of undesirable factors. In the context, slacks-based measure of super-efficiency, a non-radial super-efficiency model compared to the traditional radial super-efficiency DEA models, offers a remarkable alternative, largely due to their ability to deal with ranking the performance of efficient decision-making units (DMUs). This paper extends super-efficiency approach to the additive super-efficiency DEA approach with undesirable outputs to measuring environmental performance. Unlike the traditional radial super-efficiency DEA suffering from infeasibility, the additive super-efficiency models in the context of undesirable factors are always feasible. A case study of regional environmental performance in China is also presented by applying the proposed the additive super-efficiency DEA approach. The results show that the environmental efficiency scores of inefficient provinces were slightly lowered in China, and identified regions where these provinces have the capacity to develop without damaging overall performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China Railway Express (CRE) has changed the cargo transportation between China and Europe, as well as the environmental efficiency of relevant cities. This paper uses panel data for China's 256 cities from 2005 to 2018 and multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) method to study the impact and influence mechanism of CRE on environmental efficiency. The results found that the implementation of CRE has significantly improved environmental efficiency. The opening of CRE has improved environmental performance by promoting technological innovation and reducing the introduction of polluting foreign investment. The paper further examines and verifies that there are effects on resource crowding out and knowledge spillover between cities. The opening of CRE has a much greater impact on knowledge spillover. This study provides useful policy insights for improving environmental efficiency. • Cargo transportation and environmental efficiency have been changed. • China Railway Express has significantly improved China's environmental efficiency. • Technological innovation and Foreign investment are two influence channels. • There are both pollution transfer and knowledge spillover effects between cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of China’s rapid economic development, its transportation system has become one of China’s high-energy-consumption and high-pollution-emission sectors. However, little research has been done which pays close attention to China’s transportation system, especially in terms of energy and environmental efficiency evaluation. In this paper, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is applied to measure the energy and environment performance of transportation systems in China with the goal of sustainable development. This paper treats transportation as a parallel system consisting of subsystems for passenger transportation and freight transportation, and extends a parallel DEA approach to evaluate the efficiency of each subsystem. An efficiency decomposition procedure is proposed to obtain the highest achievable subsystem efficiency. Our empirical study on 30 of mainland China’s provincial-level regions shows that most of them have a low efficiency in their transportation system and the two parallel subsystems. There are large efficiency differences between the passenger and freight transportation subsystems. In addition, unbalanced development has occurred in the three large areas of China, with the east having the highest efficiency, followed by central China and then west. Therefore, more measures should be taken to balance and coordinate the development between the three large areas and between the two subsystems within them. Our analysis approach gives data for determining effective measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the high-quality development of the Chinese economy, the improvement of environmental efficiency in Chinese industries has become a significant task. Understanding the environmental efficiency of the logistics industry is essential for implementing effective environmental policies. This study aims to explore the impacts of economic growth, foreign direct investment (FDI), and innovation on the environmental efficiency of the logistics industry. In this paper, we apply the undesirable SBM model to calculate the environmental efficiency of the logistics industry and use the Tobit model to analyze the impacts of economic growth, foreign direct investment (FDI), and innovation on the environmental efficiency of the logistics industry in provinces along the Belt and Road in China from 2009 to 2018. Based on the results indicate the average environmental efficiency of the logistics industry in Chinese provinces along the Belt and Road is 0.7880, indicating that the environmental efficiency of the logistics industry was generally low in some regions along the belt and road. Innovation and FDI were found have a significant impact on the environmental efficiency, while economic growth fails to significantly impact on the environmental efficiency of the logistics industry in provinces along the Belt and Road. Therefore, we should encourage improvement of the level of environmental efficiency of the logistics industry. It is necessary to realize the co-ordinated development of the logistics industry and the environment through optimization of the development of innovation and transforming the FDI model in provinces along the Belt and Road. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluating and improving the environmental efficiency of the power system is the key to achieving sustainable development. However, the classic DEA approach is susceptible to producing biased results due to its inability to address spatial dependence across factors. Considering the spatial dependence of inputs and outputs, this paper proposes a dynamic spatial network DEA model with slacks-based measure (SNSBM) to examine the environmental efficiency of China's power systems, with a focus on the undesirable outputs of CO 2 , NO x , and SO 2. The investigation incorporates the Moran's I test to account for the spatial interactions of patent counts, coal consumption, CO 2 emissions, and renewable power generation. Compared to the classic network DEA, the SNSBM results reveal distinct spatial characteristics and a heightened level of differentiation, which highlights the importance of eliminating spatial dependence. From a dynamic perspective, environmental efficiency shows a visible surge in transmission and distribution divisions after 2015, confirming the success of China's market-oriented reform. In addition, CO 2 is the largest contributor to the environmental inefficiency of the power systems, followed by NO x and SO 2. This study highlights the importance of spatial dependence and provides many insightful policy recommendations for improving the environmental efficiency of China's power systems. • A dynamic spatial network DEA model with slack measures is proposed. • A spatial weight matrix is used to introduce the spatial inputs and outputs into the spatial DEA. • Environmental efficiency of China's power systems is studied with SNSBM model. • Environmental efficiency seems to be overestimated if ignoring the factor's spatial dependence. • CO 2 contributes most to the inefficiency of China's power system compared to SO 2 and NO x. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, struggling to balance environmental protection and economic growth is fundamental for the transformation of economic growth model in future. This research uses the dynamic DEA model and incorporates it into non-radial DDF. Then, the research estimates the provincial environmental performance in China during the observation period. Taking into account technological heterogeneity, in this study, the evaluated provinces are divided into two groups (temperate region and tropical and subtropical regions). The empirical findings reveal the following. (1) Most of the provinces have considerable room for enhancement in environmental performance. (2) The environmental performance of provinces in temperate regions is obviously worse than that of those in the tropical and subtropical regions. (3) Provinces in temperate region should improve environmental efficiency by reducing both their technology gap and managerial inefficiency compared to those in the tropical and subtropical regions. Considering in future that China's population will continue to shift from inland areas to coastal areas, especially large coastal cities, each province should take targeted policies to improve environmental performance according to their own situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the influencing factors of environmental efficiency of strategic emerging industries (SEIs) and cooperative game mechanism design amongst diversified actors by using China's provincial panel data from 2004 to 2019. Firstly, we find that the following factors improve the environmental efficiency of SEIs: rationalisation of the industrial structure, proportion of the tertiary industry, government's ability to intervene in the economy and fairness and integrity of environmental law enforcement. Conversely, factors, such as intensity of ecological construction and environmental regulation, hamper the environmental efficiency of SEIs. Secondly, evolutionary game analysis indicates that the behavioural strategies of game decision-making subjects depend on the behavioural decisions of the relative actors, social supervision and government regulation, which work together in influencing the environmental efficiency of SEIs. {innovation, supervision} is the optimal equilibrium state of the game. Thirdly, simulation results show that in the absence of government regulation, foreign direct investment (FDI) slows down the speed of firms tending to the equilibrium state of green innovation. The potential gain and loss of social supervision on corporate behaviour is an important factor affecting government behaviour decision making. Governments prefer punishment tools in environmental regulation, therefore influencing noninnovative firms in SEIs. We contribute to prior works by unifying various policy tools into the same econometric model framework based on an evolutionary game model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental efficiency improvement has played a crucial role in the theory and practice of stimulating clean production. This paper analyzes the interaction between environmental efficiency and output efficiency, particularly whether they reinforce each other or compete with each other, on the basis of a data set of 137 firms in the textile industry in China's Jiangsu Province. In the first stage, generalized data envelopment analysis is applied to calculate efficiency measures of energy, waste water, waste gas, soot, and output efficiency taking capital, labor, water, and energy as inputs, industrial output value as desirable output, and waste water discharges, waste gas and soot emissions as undesirable outputs. In the second stage analysis, a structural equation model with latent variables is applied to analyze the interaction between the latent variable environmental efficiency, measured by the four observed environmental indicators, and output efficiency, taking also into account the endogenous variable profit. The main outcomes of the structural equation model are the following. Firstly, environmental efficiency negatively impacts on profit while profit positively impacts on environmental efficiency. In a similar vein, output efficiency is found to depress profit while profit increases output efficiency. Thirdly, environmental efficiency has a positive impact on output efficiency while there is no effect of output efficiency on environmental efficiency. Fourthly, taxes impair a firm's output efficiency. From the findings it follows that a swap of general taxes for an energy tax is likely to improve both output efficiency and energy efficiency. The latter outcome implies a win–win situation which will facilitate the further implementation and adoption of environmental policy. Finally, the paper illustrates the applicability of structural equation modeling in efficiency analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manufacturing transfer is an important factor in optimizing the spatial distribution of resources and promoting regional environmental efficiency. Based on the manufacturing data of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2017, the spatial Durbin model is used to investigate the impact of three types of manufacturing transfer and spatial agglomeration effects on environmental efficiency under the spatial weight matrix of economic distance. The results show that the improvement of environmental efficiency is inhibited by the transfer of labor-intensive manufacturing but facilitated by the spatial agglomeration of such manufacturing. The transfer of capital and technology-intensive manufacturing has no significant impact on environmental efficiency. Environmental efficiency is significantly improved by the spatial agglomeration of technology-intensive manufacturing but significantly inhibited by that of capital-intensive manufacturing. Third, the impact of three types of manufacturing transfer on environmental efficiency is analyzed from the perspective of regional heterogeneity. This paper puts forward relevant policy suggestions from the perspectives of manufacturing transfer, the agglomeration effect, so as to further improve the environmental efficiency. • This paper analyzes the impact of manufacturing transfer on environmental efficiency. • Labor-intensive manufacturing transfer inhibits the environmental efficiency. • The transfer of capital and technology-intensive manufacturing has no significant impact on environmental efficiency. • The impact of three types of manufacturing transfer on environmental efficiency is analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, many electricity markets around the world have undergone restructuring aimed at improving efficiency. In 2002, the Chinese government also introduced a vertical unbundling reform to dismantle vertical monopolies and boost efficiency in the power sector. This study estimates the unified, operational, and environmental efficiency to comprehensively assess the impact of China's vertical unbundling on the production performance of thermal power firms. A non-radial data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach is employed to measure these efficiencies. Subsequently, a difference-in-difference model is used to assess the reform's effects. Empirical results show that the vertical unbundling improved the unified efficiency of firms. Further analysis indicates that the reform improved the operational efficiency of firms by increasing their capacity utilization and coal quality. Additionally, we find that the reform led to an increased utilization of source control technologies but resulted in a reduction in the use of end-of-pipe treatments. Due to the opposing effects on different pollution treatment stages, the reform did not have a significant impact on environmental efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mining industry plays an extremely important strategic role in China's economic and social development. In the new era of pursuing circular/green/efficient development, the evaluation of the total factor environmental efficiency (TFEE) of China's mining industry is essential for alleviating resource waste and environmental pollution. The Epsilon-Based Measure (EBM) model effectively solves the shortcomings of radial and non-radial DEA models. In addition, the Malmquist–Luenberger (ML) index can measure the dynamic change of efficiency value. Combining the EBM model and the ML productivity index, this paper evaluates the TFEE from the static and dynamic perspective in China's 31 provincial mining industries over the period 2007–2016. The Theil index is employed to reveal the root of the overall provincial TFEE gap (OGTFEE) in China's mining industry. The results show that the average total factor static environmental efficiency (TFSEE) of China's provincial mining industry exhibits a low score of 0.6589 and with significant spatio-temporal differences. The provincial TFEE gap within four major areas (WGTFEE), especially that in east and west areas, is the main cause of the OGTFEE in China's mining industry. Technical change contributes more to the TFEE decline in China's mining industry. There are differences in improving the TFEE among China's 31 provincial mining industries, and corresponding countermeasures can be formulated accordingly. This study provides theoretical and practical basis for the clean and green development of China's mining industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the adding of tourist volume in China, carbon emissions from hotel sector increased greatly. Environmental efficiency of hotel sector considering technology heterogeneity is mainly analyzed across different regions of China from 2000 to 2013. Metafrontier global Malmquist-Luenberger (ML) is implemented to evaluate environmental efficiency of hotel sector. Furthermore, we analyze whether technology heterogeneity of different regions increased or not through technological gap ratio. The empirical analysis revealed that the east had the highest environmental efficiency under metafrontier after 2009. After 2009, technological gap ratio (TGR) in the east ranked highest among four regions in China. Environmental regulation positively impacts environmental efficiency under group frontier of hotel sector in the model of nation, east, and middle. Urbanization has U-shaped link with environmental efficiency of hotel sector for the east. It is important to strengthen environmental regulation to reduce carbon emissions. Last, it is important to enhance consciousness of energy abating and carbon emissions reduction of hotel customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • A Super-SBM with undesirable output model is applied. • The environmental efficiency of 283 Chinese cities during 2003–2016 is analyzed. • The overall environmental efficiency performance across the Chinese cities is low. • China has achieved significant improvement in environmental efficiency across survey period. Abstract In the past decades, unprecedented dramatic economic development in the Chinese cities has also brought serious environmental problems. In line with this, the Chinese government has been investing great efforts and resources in addressing environmental problems. However, little previous studies have been conducted in examining whether this development is efficient from a win-win perspective balance between economic growth and environmental protection. This paper presents a comprehensive analysis on the environmental efficiency (EE) in the process of dramatic economic development in the Chinese cities. The Super-slack-based measure (Super-SBM) model is adopted to analyze the EE performance. Data used for analysis are collected from 283 sample cities in China. The research results indicate that the overall EE performance across the Chinese cities is relatively low, and the differences in EE performance among the 283 cities are significant. The top three EE performers are Shenzhen, Sanya and Erdos, and Baiyin, Xinzhou and Liupanshui are the bottom three performers. The results also suggest that the EE performance in the Eastern area, where most first-tier cities are located in, is significantly higher than that in the Central and Western areas (aggregated with fourth and fifth tier-cities). From the dynamic perspective, the results show that China has achieved significant improvement in environmental efficiency across the surveyed period of 2003–2016. The research findings provide valuable references not only for the Chinese policy-makers and practitioners to adopt measures for promoting a win-win balance between environmental protection and economic development in the Chinese context, but also for further studies on environmental efficiency in the international context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper estimates the shadow price of CO 2 from burning maize straw in the Chinese agricultural sector and explores the related policy implications for decision makers. Using a quadratic directional distance function, we evaluate the production inefficiency and shadow prices of CO 2 reduction for the seven major maize-producing provinces in China for 1996–2014. In general, the efficiency improves over time. Shandong province ranked as the top one with full efficiency considering both economic and environmental impacts as of 2014. The mean shadow price for the CO 2 emission was 0.45 yuan/kg (US$75/t), whereas the province-specific shadow prices varied within the interval bounded by 0 and 0.913 yuan/ha (US$152/t). The marginal abatement cost curve was downward-sloped and indicated the need for curbing CO 2 emission in areas exhibiting the highest pollution rates. Given the marginal abatement cost patterns, the transaction costs associated with implementation of the conservation practices (tillage) should not exceed 335 yuan/ha in order to ensure the welfare gains. This government-provided payment would compensate farmers for yield reductions in favor of implementing conservation practices that would substantially reduce CO 2 emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The green efficiency of water resources is important for industrial cleaner production and sustainable development. Existing studies pay much attention to the economic efficiency of water resource utilisation, ignoring its green efficiency. In order to solve this problem, an index of green total factor water efficiency (GTFWE) that can reflect the economic efficiency and green efficiency of water resources is constructed based on the DEA-SBM model with undesirable output. In addition, GTFWE is comprised of green total factor water management efficiency (GTFWME) and green total factor water environmental efficiency (GTFWEE) using the four-stage DEA model. The empirical results show that GTFWE in China's industry is at a low level, the effect of GTFWEE on GTFWE is generally increasing, and GTFWME is decreasing. However, there are large differences in these trends between regions and provinces in China. The GTFWME of Beijing, Tianjin, and seven other provinces needs improvement, while the GTFWME and GTFWEE of Hebei, Inner Mongolia, and other 15 provinces is low and also need improving. In contrast, both GTFWME and GTFWEE are high in the Shandong and Guangdong provinces. This paper provides a method for assessing GTFWE in China's industry and proposes some important policy implications for promoting the efficiency of China's industrial green total factor water resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasingly high frequency of heavy air pollution in most regions of China signals the urgent need for the transition to an environmentally friendly production performance by socioeconomic sectors for the sake of people's health and sustainable development. Focusing on CO 2 and major air pollutants, this paper presents a comprehensive environmental efficiency index based on evaluating the environmental efficiency of major socioeconomic sectors, including agriculture, power, industry, residential and transportation, at the province level in China in 2010 based on a slack-based measure DEA model with non-separable bad output and weights determined by the coefficient of variation method. In terms of the environment, 5, 16, 6, 7 and 4 provinces operated along the production frontier for the agricultural, power, industrial, residential and transportation sectors, respectively, in China in 2010, whereas Shanxi, Heilongjiang, Ningxia, Hubei and Yunnan showed lowest efficiency correspondingly. The comprehensive environmental efficiency index varied from 0.3863 to 0.9261 for 30 provinces in China, with a nationwide average of 0.6383 in 2010; Shanghai ranked at the top, and Shanxi was last. Regional disparities in environmental efficiency were identified. A more detailed inefficiency decomposition and benchmarking analysis provided insight for understanding the source of comprehensive environmental inefficiency and, more specifically, the reduction potential for CO 2 and air pollutants. Some specific research and policy implications were uncovered from this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper mainly investigates how 2008's Beijing Olympic Games affects environmental efficiency of China's cities. First, we evaluate environmental efficiency through metafrontier directional distance function (DDF), and compare environmental efficiency in different region from static and dynamic perspectives. We also analyze the different treatment of before Olympic Games, during Olympic Games, after Olympic Games on different groups. We find that TGR in the east is the highest, which indicates that environmental production technology in the east has relatively less difference than other three regions. During Olympic Games positively affected environmental efficiency in Beijing, which negatively affected on environmental efficiency under metafrontier in neighbor cities. After Olympic Games positively affected environmental efficiency in Beijing and co-host cities, however, which has insignificant effect on environmental efficiency in neighbor cities. We try to propose some policy implication. First, it is import to develop high-end industry and lengthen value chain of China's secondary industry. Furthermore, it is necessary to improve environmental threshold of FDI and attract clean FDI, which can decrease environmental pollution. Last, China will host 2022 Winter Olympic Games. It is important to use more environmental-soundly building material, and increase clean renewable energy public bus, which can promote green Olympic Games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improvement of coal consumption efficiency is very important both for China in solving its problems of energy security and environmental pollution and for the world in addressing the issue of greenhouse gas emissions. Using a total-factor framework, this paper employs a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach to evaluate the coal consumption efficiency of six energy intensive sub-industries in China in 2015. Coal consumption efficiency is factorized into economic efficiency and environmental efficiency, with sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and industrial smoke, dust and soot emissions treated as undesirable outputs of energy consumptions. The results show the following. (1) Of the six energy intensive sub-industries studied, two exhibit both DEA-effective coal economic efficiency and coal environmental efficiency. Coal economic efficiency is found to be greater than coal environmental efficiency, indicating that the benefits of economic efficiency have masked the negative effects of the environmental impact. China should therefore pay more attention to the clean utilization of coal. (2) Low environmental efficiency mainly resulted from the joint effects of pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency; therefore, enterprises in these industries must engage in management efforts to improve their ability to manage large enterprises. (3) The energy intensive industries characterized by coal environmental efficiency that failed to achieve pure technological effectiveness all exhibited input redundancy or output inadequacy of varying degrees while showing a potential for energy conservation and emissions reductions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to introduce the new constraints of PM2.5 into the environmental efficiency research framework, based on the provincial panel data of China during 2001-12. The authors examine environmental efficiency with and without consideration of PM2.5, conduct hypothesis tests on these environmental efficiencies, and analyze the energy savings and haze reduction. The results indicate that the overall environmental efficiency score is inefficient. The average environmental efficiency scores are 0.706 and 0.867 with and without the consideration of PM2.5, respectively, and omitting PM2.5 would result in biased environmental efficiency change. In addition, empirical analysis shows that there is an unbalanced regional development and significant differences among provinces in environmental efficiency. Last but not the least, the potential savings of energy, water, and regional haze reduction average 24.26%, 39.16%, and 26.49%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, economy grows rapidly in China but it also pays a huge cost of destroy of resources and environment, and energy-saving and emission reduction has become a hot topic. This paper aims at calculating the environmental efficiency and environmental total factor productivity (TFP) of Beijing under the constraint of energy-saving and emission reduction to explore the relationship of the city’s economy and environment. We used an improved directional distance function – Biennial Directional Distance Function (BDDF) and Luenberger (L) productivity index which is corresponding to BDDF. This method can decompose the efficiency and productivity according to input and output factors and solve the problem of infeasible solution. The study found that the environmental efficiency of Beijing is different from regions and it takes on a concave distribution from the urban center to the edge of the city. Energy inputs and environmental pollution are the main influence factors of environmental inefficiency. The environmental TFP of the two central regions is higher than the two fringe regions, and through the decomposition results, we learned that the technology progress and the energy-saving emission reduction are the core of productivity growth momentum. From the change trend, the environmental efficiency of Beijing reached a high level in 2011 and followed by a slow decline. Whereas environmental TFP showed a tortuous rise trend which is down to the lowest in 2011–2012 and up to the highest in 2015. Based on our conclusions, we can say that energy-saving and emission reduction work of Beijing has made some good achievements, but with the difficulties increase we should take more reasonable measures according to the actual situation and join together to make the results of energy-saving and emission reduction work more effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Haze has seriously threatened the ecological environment and public health, so researching environmental efficiency under haze constraints is significant in managing pollution and evaluating the balance between economic development and environmental health. Based on the panel data of China's 99 cities during 2005–2017, this paper uses α-convergence and β-convergence models to analyze the spatial convergence of environmental efficiency under haze constraints and its drivers in China,specifically in Eastern China, Central China, and Western China.The main results are as follows: (1) The trend of environmental efficiency under haze constraints in these regions evidently follows a dumbbell curve. In recent years, it has been growing slowly in Eastern China, Central China, and Western China, and the environmental efficiency in the Eastern China is the highest, the Central China is the second, and the Western China is the lowest; (2) it demonstrates both α-convergence and β-convergence in Central China, Western China, and Eastern China, and the speed of convergence is the fastest in the Central China, the second in the Western China and the slowest in the Eastern China; there is a "catch-up effect" in cities from less environmentally efficient regions to more efficient regions; and (3) Industrial structure and degree of trade dependence have a significantly negative correlation; characteristics of the region and dependence on foreign investment have significantly positive correlations with the environmental efficiency of Eastern China and Central China; environmental regulations and economic scale limit the improvement of environmental efficiency of Central China and Western China; and technological innovation significantly impacts Eastern China only. Although the paper refers to the specific evidence of China, with haze as a new indicator in the comprehensive evaluation of environmental efficiency can be extended to other developing countries as well as to other pollutants such as land pollution and waste water. The understanding of drivers of environmental efficiency under haze constraints in China provides international policy-makers with valuable reference for formulating effective measures to balance the dilemma between economic development and environmental health. • Haze was brought into the framework of environmental efficiency. • The environmental efficiency in China followed a dumbbell curve. • A "catch-up effect" in less environmentally efficient regions was confirmed. • Industrial structure had a negative correlation with the environmental efficiency [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]