Search

Over the past decades, China's vast regional disparities in resource endowment, economic development, and industrial structure have driven large-scale relocations of high energy-consuming industries (RHEIs). Despite extensive research on broad-based industrial relocation and emission transfer, the trend, structure and environmental impact of China's RHEIs need further investigation. This paper employs the multi-regional input-output model (MRIO) to calculate the trend, scale, and structure of the RHEIs among China's 30 provinces. Additionally, we investigate the RHEIs' effect on green total factor energy efficiency (GEE) and its heterogeneity. Our results indicate that the net inflow of high energy-consuming industries decreases GEE, with a more noticeable effect observed in central provinces and after the execution of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). However, the positive effect of RHEIs on GEE in outflow areas is more substantial than their negative impact in inflow areas, suggesting that RHEIs can enhance overall efficiency. This study contributes to the understanding of China's industrial relocation by providing valuable insights into China's RHEIs. • China has a large-scale relocation of high energy-consuming industries. • The relocation of China's high energy-consuming industries is calculated. • The relocation's impact on green total factor energy efficiency is analyzed. • Regional heterogeneity is found among different provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]