Research On Carbon Total Factor Productivity Measurement,Decomposition And Policy Effect Of China’s Thermal Power Industry

The energy resource endowment of a country or region largely determines the energy supply and supply structure of the country or region,and the characteristics of China’s "rich coal and poor oil" mean that the power generation industry is mainly coal-based for power generation,which produces particularly large carbon emissions.Achieving low-carbon development in the thermal power industry has become an important starting point for China to fulfill its dual carbon commitments,in short,to obtain more social and economic benefits under the premise of emitting less carbon dioxide,which is the essence of carbon total factor productivity.Throughout the literature,most studies based on carbon productivity focus on a single factor perspective,ignoring the impact of national energy policies on production decision-making units.Therefore,this study selects the carbon total factor productivity of China’s interprovincial thermal power industry as the research object,and conducts relevant empirical research on the scientific question of "whether the development trend of carbon total factor productivity of China’s provincial thermal power industry in the past 15 years is affected by energy policy".Firstly,under the conceptual framework of total factors,this thesis takes carbon dioxide emissions as undesired outputs from the perspective of output,constructs a set of carbon total factor productivity measurement models that conform to the characteristics of China’s interprovincial thermal power generation,and first uses the undesirable SBM model to measure the carbon total factor productivity of 30 interprovincial units from 2005 to 2020 from a static perspective.Then,the GML productivity index method based on non-radial directionality distance function is used to decompose the carbon total factor productivity changes of each unit,explore the dynamic sources behind their development changes,and test the convergence of CTFP and its decomposition terms.Finally,the double difference model is used to verify the causal relationship between the implementation of energy policy and the change of carbon total factor productivity in the thermal power industry of each production decision-making unit,so as to provide differentiated scientific guidance for provincial governments and relevant departments to improve carbon total factor productivity.Based on the input-output data of power production in the thermal power industry in the past 16 years,the main conclusions obtained by using the undesirable SBM model and the NDDF-GML productivity index method are that the carbon total factor productivity level of the national thermal power industry under static measurement is relatively low,and the carbon total factor productivity level under dynamic measurement is not high,but the change trend over the years is good.The decomposition results of carbon total factor productivity confirm that technological innovation is the main root cause of improving CTFP,and the level of technical efficiency needs to be improved,and in the convergence analysis,it is also confirmed that carbon total factor productivity and its decomposition terms are not convergent.At the end of this thesis,focusing on whether the national energy policy will have an impact on each production decision-making unit,the double difference model is used to empirically test,and the results are still stable under a number of robustness tests,and the national energy policy will promote the development of carbon total factor productivity of thermal power.Finally,the possible contributions of this study mainly include:(1)under the all-factor framework,the lowcarbon development level of the thermal power industry is measured more scientifically and statically by using the non-expected SBM model,and the GML productivity index is used in the dynamic assessment,and the units are quantified and ranked through the index measurement results,thereby expanding the new evaluation dimension of carbon productivity.(2)After adding a number of new control variables,the policy effect was empirically tested by using the double difference model,and the positive effect of national energy policy on the development of carbon total factor productivity of thermal power was verified and supported.