Environmental Efficiency Evaluation Under Carbon Emission Constraints In Western China

Since the western development strategy was carried out from 2000, the economics of western had made a gratifying achievement. However, the resulting environmental problems also couldn’t be ignored, extensive development model made the environment of the western, which was fragile all the time, more terrible. Environmental problem has become the bottleneck of restricting the sustainable development of the western region already. Especially, after the industrial transfer from the east to the west, and then a large number of industries placed in western region. Although the economic had development much, the western region has had a huge amount of carbon emissions also. In another words, the western has become a "high-carbon economy" industrial district. Under the background of low-carbon development, it has an important practical significance to know how to promote the low-carbon development of the western region and improve its environment efficiency.The measure of environment efficiency is useful for decision-makers to find out the shortage of economic factors, environmental factors, social factors and so on, and then take out some effective environmental improvement measures. This research took the capital, energy consumption, land, CO2 emissions, and GDP as the inputs and outputs variable. First, the study used the SBM model based on undesirable outputs to measure static environmental efficiency of cities under carbon emission constraint in the western region of China from 2000 to 2012. The researchers also utilized the Malmquist Index to further analyze the tendency of environmental efficiency change. Additionally, the researchers utilized Tobit regression analysis to study the factors that are relevant to environmental efficiency, seeking the quantitative relationship between the two. Practical solutions were also offered at the end of the paper to improve environmental quality in Western China. The study showed that:In Western China, environmental efficiency in areas with carbon emission constraint was significantly lower than that without carbon emission constraint, and the difference between the two environmental efficiencies could be described as an inverse U-shaped curve that increased at first and then decreased.Guangxi and Inner Mongolia, two provinces under carbon emission constraint, met the effective environmental efficiency levels all the time. However, the five provinces of Guizhou, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang did not. Furthermore, Ningxia had the lowest level of environmental efficiency, with a score between 0.281-0.386.The reason made efficient lost wasn’t the shortage of excepted outputs, but the large number of input factors and undesirable output. Among them, excessive CO2 emissions and a large amount of energy consumption were the primary factors causing environmental inefficiency in Western China, while the land factor relatively minimal impact on environmental efficiency.Although the environmental efficiency of most provinces was currently at an ineffective level, the environmental efficiency quality was gradually improving at the average speed of 6.6% and the technical change had an effective influence on the efficiency while the technical effect was not.Energy intensity had the most negative impact on environmental efficiency. The increase of import and export trade reduced the environmental efficiency significantly in Western China, while the increase of foreign direct investment had a positive effect on Western China’s environmental efficiency.